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7THE NEW MERCERSBURG REVIEWJournal of the Mercersburg SocietyNumber Twenty-six Autumn 1999

Along with all of the other participants in the Convocation we are gratefullyindebted to the Rev. William O. Harris, Librarian for Archives a nd Special Collectionsof Princeton Theological Seminary, who made all of the arrangements for thepresenters as well as our accommoclations while in Princeton, a truly wonderfuloffering of his time and expertise which ensured a very successful and memorableevent.R. Howard Paine, Editor2

-;;;;; ;;;;;;;;J ;;;:;;0,"" nor a mixturesub8tance8,~ in the Roman or Lutheran sense, ~ but spiritual andmystical:" not merely mental, but including the real Presence of Christ'swhole life under an objective character. and reaching our side alsothrough the soul into the body, ~ari sing from the indwelling of the Spirit,"not as the proxy only of an absent Christ , but as the supematuml bondof a true life-connection, by which his very flesh is joined to ours, moreintimate by far than the trunk to its branches, or the head to itsshoulders. in the natural world. '"The efficacy of this sacrament, as ameans of grace, is not in the signs." separately taken, ~nor in theservice," outwardly considered, "nor in the minister, nor in the Word , butsolely in the attending influence of the Holy Ghost." as the necesMl}'complement or inward side of the divine mystery itself, of whose presencethe outward signs are true guaranty and pledge, and whose mirific actioncan never fail to take effect objectively where the subject is in a state toildmit it by faith. "This we belie:ve." So filled out with positive contents,Wto be a fair statement of the doctrine of the Refonned Church."4We have recently seen a deserved rcncwal of interest ill Hodge in his culturalsetting,5 so I indulge myself in saying more about the rather more complexly d iverseinfluences which shaped Nevin and whose inherent tensions he valued. Thissupplemented version just quoted - of Hooge 's position was unacceptable to Hodge. Hehad no feel for what Nevin calls ~th e divine mystery itselr nor for ~the supernaturalbond of a true life connection" nor for efficaciolls operation understood as ~ nullifyingmirifically the bar of d istance and bringing the very substance of his l:xx:Iy into unionwith their [God's people'sllife."From the above recited representative passage we see clearly that a t least onething whic h Nevin - and Nevin' s readiug of Calvin point to is the one thing that ismost unintelligible to Hodge and to most of those who follow Hooge's ltad. Hooge callsthis "Calvin's peculiar" view. Hodge's attributed t his peculiarity, evident in Calvin andunfortunately in some of the Reformed confes sions and catechism moat influenced byhim, partly to some lingering Medieval mysticism and partly to political sit ua t ion~which Calvin and those who followed him all this point had to appeast: Lutheran andRoman Catholic opponents."Calvin's peculiar" teaching was that believers are so united to Christ throughthe Holy Spirit that they participate not only in the benefits of his life, death andresurrection but participate primarily in the full person of Christ including hisin5

humanity so that the vivific, living power of his flesh flows into believers especially inthe Eucharist - them, thereby more and more inserting, engrafting, t hem into an evenfuller unity with Christ. There is, according to Nevin, no enjoying Christ's benefitswhich is not derived from a prior mystical union believers have with Christ - mystical,yes, because the manner of Christ's real, actual, living presence in the Eucharistremain a mystery, but also mystical because that which the bcliever participates in isnot just the benefits of Christ but participation in the substance of Christ's life, thelife-giving reality of the hypostatic union.The sacramental doctrine of the primitive Rdormed church standsinseparably connected with the idea of an inward living union betweenbelievers and Christ, in virtue of which they are incorporated into hisvery nature, and made to subsist with him by the power o f a commonlife. In full correspondence with this conception of the Christian salvationas a process by which the believer is mystically inserted more and moreinto the person of Christ till he becomes thus fully transfonned into hisperson is involved always in the right use of the !.-ord·s Supper.6Nevin goes on to say that the union of Christ with believers is not simply that ofa common humanity.no'v.:here we are. said to he of the same life with him [Christ], members ofhIS body, of IllS flesh and of his bones [Eph. 5 :301, it is not merely on theground merely of a joint participation with him in the nature of Adam,but on t~e ground of our participation in his own nature as a higherorder ? f lIfe: OUf relation to him is not circuitous and collateral only; itholds 10 a direct connection with his person.7[t i1l also more than a mere moral union, and more than simply a legal union,merely with Christ"s divine nature or merely '\vith the Holy Ghost as therepresentative of his presence in the world. ~~It does not hold in the . fl 'h· . ..I10 uences 0 t e Splnt merely enbghtemng thesouanm·· d hi· •. d d oVing I~ to 0 y affectIons and purposes. It is by the Spirit,10 ee , we arc umted to Ch . , 0 I·' . .Sp·,n·, ., I ns. ur new I e IS comprehended HI theas I s e ement and med· B··1 th !Urn. ut It IS always bound in this elementF:th: per~on.~~ ~~e Lord Jesus Christ himself. Our fellowship is with ther an WI IS son Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost'"In Refonned doctrine •6

participating in the reality, prior to our knowing and interpreting, of the Person JesusChrist and his resurrected and glorified body. To use other language which Nevin mostfrequently uses we -now because we are already made, by the power of the Holy Spirit,participants in the actualization of the Idea of the Church - or true Christianity whichhe held was the same as the Church.Nevin did not, as far as I know, understand the church to be an extension ofthe Incarnation. That would be to violate one of the operative principles of his thought,namely that in the Incarnation we have the singular definition of the relation of theparticular to the universal, the actualb..ation to the Idea. The one person - the onehypostatic union - Jesus Christ is utterly unique (I know: if it is unique, there arc nodegtees of uniqueness.). To this prior hypostatic union of thl! divine and human, JesusChrist, the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity become flesh, to thisone we are mystica!!y united.That, consequently and derivatively, means that by the power of the Holy Spiritwe are actua!!y, rea!!y, organically, mystically united to each other in the lxxIy ofChrist, the church. The members of Christ's body need daily repentance andforgiveness as they grow more and more into \lOion with him in his body, and grace isthe actualization of that freely given and rait accompli, objective identity as those towhom Christ has united himself. It is because we are already united to Christ thatChrist is known to be really, a ctually, organically, livingly, "vivificall y~,present in the Lord's Supper."mjrifi cally~Elsewhere, ! have noted the extent to which Hodge's desire to be scientific as atheologian as scientists in other field were, and to do by taking what he consideredBiblical facts to be the material with which a Christian theologian works. In Hodge'scase, this scientific attention to Biblical data meant a solid confidence in theinfallibility of Scripture~ and though there werc several back-up arguments (likeconfidence in the infallibility of the original form of a Biblical tcxt, which original mayhave been corrupted in thi9 or that place), Hodge p laced a great deal of weight on adoctrine of inspiration of Scripture in which the Holy Spirit worked to guaranteeinfalliblc data with which the scicntific theologian can work. Note that Hodge pursuedthis argument not out of a view that theology can be done ignoring culturaldevelopmen t , but quite the contrary - he took seriously the apologetic task of theology9

and sought a commonality of method which could be appealed to in order to helpaccount for the reliability and rational character of theology.Nevin's understanding of the organic character of doctrinal development freedhim from being pinned down at an impasse over the literal infallibility of Scripture.When attending to Nevin's doctrine. one has the impression over and over that Hodge'ssticking point, the need for a n infallibly inspired Biblical text, quite eluded Nevin -e..-en appeared to him to be counter-procluctive in the sense that it called for so muchtrust in a secondary reality. He so worked with the presupposition of the mysticalunion, that it was quite clear to him that Christ is the focus. beginning and telos offaith, in such a way tha t, yes, the only Christ we know is the one lold of andproclaimed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments but, no, the Eternal Wordbecome flesh is not contained by but contains the sacred writ ings and makes use ofthem so they are nonnative, canonical, although in places clearly erroneous, onmatters of cosmology, for example.For Nevin, the development of SUcceSS1ve creeds a nd confessions, while notcanonical as Scripture, provided defining boundaries by which members of the Body ofChrist in sucocnive contexts articulated and oore witnc8S to the reality of the union ofChrist over the whole of the Church's life. In fa ct, it would be impossible accurately tospeak of Christ apart from the canonical Scriptures, just as it would be possibleaccurately to speak of the authority of canonical Scriptures apart from what makesthem canonical - that their content, substance, reality is the one to whom by thepower of the Holy Sprit the communio sanctorum is united. The one who unites us tohimself is tofus Christus, Christ clothcd with his benefits and that means Christ withhis Body the Church. On this latter point, Nevin is insisting on a point and a methodwhich are at the heart of Calvin's theology - and is insisting on a point which Hodgefinds to be Calvin's peCUliarity.When it come15 to the relation of sign to reality in the sacraments, Nevin ratherfaithfully articulates again an Augustinian complex of affinnations. I say ~Augustinian·not because it was restricted to him, nor because we can argue that this complex ofa ffirmations was finst stated by Augustine. Rather we do so because of the influenceOn Christian Dodn'ne exercised in Western Christendom, right though theReformation. The debates were set by the terms of signa et res and their relation toeach other. With Calvin, Nevin understands the connection between res and signa to10

e t he closest possible withou t en dangering the integrity o f either res or signa: in fact ,so seriously are the s igna taken by Calvin and Nevi n after him, tha t a ny doctrinewhich endangered t he a ppoin ted s igns - the ~ordai ned ~ elements for this sacredmystery threatened the presence of the reality of which the dements a re signs madeefficacious by the Word a nd the Spirit. That is the fundamental reason why Calvinobjec ted to the doctrine of tra nsu bstantiation: not t hat it promised the real presence ofChrist in the Eucharist, but because it t hreatened t he realistic con nection between t heappointed signs bread a nd wine and the reality of the sacrament - Christ himselfclothed with his benefits.When Augustin said "the Word comes to the elements and makes thesacrament" it was to en s u re that no ne c"'Qu[d be tempted that there was someefficacious power in herent in t he bread a nd wine and water: the most intimateconnectio n , conjunction, between ~ ign and reality existed because of Chrillt'll promise.Tha t is much more than saying the lIacrament is ulleful as a visible or tactileillustration to b ring home the t ru t hs set forth in preaching. [t is saying that jUlIt aspreaching is one fonn of proclamation of the Word so is a sac ramem, in so far as theconnectio n between elements (or vox, and words as signs, in the case of preaching)and res is made by the fresh act of Christ by the power of the spirit keeping hispromise to be present u nder these cond itions . The preaching of thc Word has,a ccording to Calvin, the further function of confronting wou [d·be participams in theLord's Supper with the ir need for repentance and for trust in the forgivcness of sinsthrough t he merits of Christ alone, t he only spec ification of "worthy" being this sincererepentance a nd promise by grace to walk in newness of life.The paradigm (my word, not Calvin's or Nevin's) of Romans is typical of thismovemen t between s ign and reality: as we are baptized into his death, we are alsomade partic ipants in h is resurrection , and ena bled to walk in newne9S of life. That iswhy it so forcefu l to repeat in the litu rgy of the Lord's Supper that the bread and thewine are t he communion, koinonia, participation of t he body a nd blood of Chris l. Thefaith of tht: believer does n ot cause Christ to be presen t. Th e res is there a s aprecondition of faith; Christ is really present under the cond itions of bread and winewhen those are set a part by prayer a nd thanksgiving from a common to a sacred U!lC,a nd faith is t he way that is already t here, freely offered, is a ppropriated by t hose towhom Christ. a fter all and before all, ha s a lready united himsel f. And be s ure to recall1 1

Calvin's description of the "marvelous exchangc· which is the content of thecontinually renewed progress (and that is the word) by which Christ more and mOrejoins himself to us until we are made into the fullness of the image of God in the faceof Christ.IV. Two Philosophically Eclectic StreamsWhen we attempt precisely to define the philosophies which serve as thehandmaidens of Nevin's and Hodge's theologies, we undertake to navigate watersnotoriously full of unexpected shoals and adverse currents . We can repeat the generalconclusions of some who have previously sailed these parts, but beyond that I proposcto raise several questions - some sounding quests, if you will - along the lines of whichmore work has to be done.F'irst, then to some general conclusions or broad consensuses with which Iagree a!IJ far as they go. As regards Hodge, we have a theologian thoroughly imbuedwith what is called the common sense philosophy of the Scottish variety. That in itselfpennits a rather wide range of definitions, but at the lealH it is a combination ofempiricism and utilitarianism. That which is most reliably known is what we sense,what our senses tell us most immediately, not to achieve an abstract idea of what istrue and good but which serves a workable social consensus tacitly or overtly takenfor granted by thosc who live within that consensus.While its critics accuse this philosophical stream of begging the epistemologicalquelltion, it can point to 80me ways that other philosophies in fact operate with agenerally accepted modus vivendi based in part with such an empiricaJ and usefulexperience of what is reasonable. In the case of Hodge at least, it ill infonned with amotiYD.ting piety: there is trut hful common sense behind what we today would calltruth claims, not all truth claims but those which scrve to edify the believer'sunderstanding the truths which are supremely mediated through thc writings of theOld and New Testaments. This common sense piety has part o f its appeal in that it issuspicious of what appears to it as abstract thought in dialecticians which would onlyremove philosophy, and theology, from common s ense experience.As regards Nevin, the dominant commonplace conclusion IS that his is atransplanting of a Eurppean hybrid of romanticism and idealism into American soil,IOThat assessment, while accurate , is broad enough to cover several meanings. some of12

them contradictory. I also do not wish to minimize the usually noted innuence ofNeander on Nevin's thought. By all accounts, Nevin himself - and not just Nevintogether with Schaff - wa s perhaps the American theologian in the Reformed traditionin the nineteenth century most conversant with a wide range of continental, especiallyGerman, philosophical theology. An intriguing question is worth asking here: howmuch of Hodge's opposition to Nevin in latter years was due to Hodge's occasionallysomewhat blanket suspicion of much of German theological currents with which, hefeared, his former student and colleague at Princeton had become infected?Rather than attempt to define in advance what these terms may mean whenapplied to Nevin, [ prefer here to obselVC a case in which he uses tenns and thoughtprocesses which others have so labeled. We can only do a modest task of observing aninstance in which Nevin adapts these philosophical options to his own use when hedeals with the classical problems of the One and the many, the universal and theparticular, or the relation of being to becoming. He draws on these sources eclectically :they may be of varied philosophical streams that do not necessarily fi t well together,yet have the ability to articulate some doctrinal prOVISion. A self-coherentphilosophical system is not what Nevin seeks, but a combination of reasonablepositions which will make his theological teachings more intelligible to a wider range ofthinkers than would otherwise be the case.Obviously Nevin does not seek to evade the scandal of particularity of thegospel, and obviously he does not evade the central mystery of the faith . It is just thathe uses many tools to identify which is the saving mystery which theologians adorewith all their beings including reason. This eclecticism comes naturally to Nevin fortwo main reasons: it is the way he thinks through the coherence of doctrineaffirmation8 in his own time; and in studying the patristics and others like Calvin, hesees in them philosophical presuppositions of rather different schools of thoughtturned to the service of theological doctrine and apologetic.Typically Nevin speaks about a single idea that becomes acluali7..ed throughmultiplicity in multiplicity. [n his speech on "Catholic Unity" delivered beforc the jointConvention of t he RefOlmed Dutch and he German Reformed Churchcs, Harrisburg onAugust 8, 1844, Nevin employs this to apply Ephesians 4 :4-6 to the immediateproblem of many denominationll and the unity of the Church. The unity of theChristian Church "is composed of a vast number of individual members, but these areJ 3

all actuated by the power of a common life. and the whole of this life gatheN! itself upultimately or fundamentally in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the principle or root ofthe Church, and the Church, through all ages, is one simply because it stands -in thepresence and power of this root, universally and forever. " IIThe Christian has his life from Christ. He is not only placed in a newrelation to the law by the imputation of the Savior's ri ghteousness to himin an outward forensic way. but a new nature is imparted to him also. byan actual communication of the Savior's life over into his person. In hisregeneration, he is inwardly united to Christ. by the power of the HolySpirit. and thus brought within the sphere of that "law of t he spirit oflife: by which in the end the "law of sin and death- [Rom. 8:21 isoverpowered and destroyed in all them that believe. A d ivine seed isplanted in him, the genn of a new existence, which is dt:slined graduallyto grow and gather strength, till the whole man shall be at last fuJlytransfonned into its image, The new nature thus introduced is the natureof Christ and it continues to be his nature through the whole course ofhis development, onward to the last day. l:lNevin goes on to cite Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism whom Nevin finds tobe in agreement on the point that we ·participate truly and properly" in the Adam'sand in the second Adam'S nature. "The whole humanity of Christ, soul and body, iscarried over by the process of the Christian salvation into the person of the believer, sothat in the end his glorified body, 110 less than his glorified soul, will appear a s thenatural and necessary product of the life he is thus made to partic ipate. HisResurrection is only his regeneration, fully revealed at last and complete.-13As applied to the nature of the Church, the relation of the universal to theparticular is organic with the priority going to the universal. Nevin draws on theorganic analogies ueed from time out of mind: the relation of oak to acorn, of vine tografted branches, of human nature to individual humans.Tht: Church does not rest upon its members but the members rest uponthe .C~u~h . Individual Christianity is not s~mcthing older than generalChnsttan1ty, bu.t the general in this case goes before the particular, andrules and cond1tlons all its manifestations. So it is with every organicn~ture. The whole [which is more than "~Wl is older and deeper than thepart'h 'r.' ',ndT'hhesc last spring forth perpetually from the active presence ofe . Irs . . e part. ' ,"n lh e en d' , are only the revelat10n . of what wasprell'lously Iflcluded in the whole.14l4

We have no ted above: the common linking of Nevin's orgamc metaphors tonineteenth-century romanticism and idealism. The tie to Neander, especially, meritseven further work, not the least reason for which being that Neander is worthrevisiting in his own right. In concluding my present remarks, I want, however. to callattention to one fascinating aspect of such further work one which is quite obviousbut, perhaps for tha t very reason. rather ignored or too much taken for granted: theusus palrum of Nevin, and even of Neander in tum influential on Nevin . It is strikingthat much of what rcligiou8 historians of the nineteenth-century call the romantic useof organic metaphors may well be just the reappropriation of the use of organicmetapho rs whic h were commonplace in a vast array of patri~tic lext!'! . Those patristictexts very often appear when an author i~ commenting on what, a fter all, are layersand layers of organic imagery in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Thesame is th e case for the writings of sixteenth-cent ury refonners who used patristictexts, and who saw, indeed, that part of the rdonn of the Church was the recovery ofthose patristic, as well as biblical, sources . LeFevre's motto is well worth owningperennially: Christum exfontibus Praedirore.l15

END NOTESThree blocks north of the house where I write the beginning of this paper, inI. Fredericksburg, Virginia, is the apothecary shop and garden of Hugh Mercer,the same one who came to F'redericksburg from Pcnnsylvania at theencouragement of George Washington, and who. also at the behest ofWashington went north at the outbreak of the War of Independence. ThePrinceton ~ttl efield and the oak under which the fatally wounded GeneralMercer is supposed to have been taken are on Mercer Street. So is the campusof Princeton Theological Seminary (and 98 Mercer Street, home for many yearsof one of the Charles Hooge Professors of Systematic Theology) where theMercersburg Theological society meets this year, and where Nevin was astudent (1823-1828). WId teaching assistant for part of the time. of CharlesHodge. The town in Pennsylvania was named after the general in 17802. The \"Itudy which continues to be most suggestive to me, and with whosetheological evaluation! am led to disagree as wil! be seen below, is J. H.Nichols, Romanfidsm in Ameriam Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersoorg,Chicago, 1961. Cf. also L.J. Binkley's effort in The Mercersburg Theology,Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1953, and the earlier (1889) work of T. Appel, TheLifeand Work Of John Wrlliamson Nevin. For the traditiol1 in which the Mercersburgtheologians placed Neander and for assessing Neander's innuence on Nevin,see r. Schafrs intriguing Saint Augustin, Melandhon, Neander (18861. Ofparticular interest for this study is Neander's treatment (one of his earlieststudies: 1813. the year he was appointed to teach in Berlin where he had inturn studied with Schleicrmacher and had been bapti7.cd in 18061 of S1.Bernard.3. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippencott. 1946. Henceforth revered to as TMP.4. From "The Doctrine of thc Reformed Church on the Presence of Christ in theLord's Supper; in The MerrFrsbury Theo lngy . ed. James Hastings Nichols, NewYork, Oxford University Press, pp. 252-253.5. Charles /iodge Reuisited: A Critia.d Approi.sa.J of His Life and Work. A Symposiumof HistOrians a nd Theologians, Princeton, New Jersey, October 22-24, 1997.Sponsored by Princeton Theological Seminary and the Center for the Study ofAmerican Religion at Princeton University. While no editor is named on my copyof this collection of Cssays and resrxmses, John W. Stewart was the personlarge!y responsible for the symposium. For our purposes sec especially: BruceKuk l ~c. k, :Ch~rles Hodge, Scottish Realism and the American PhilosophicalTradition: Bnan A. Gerrish, ~ Char1es Hodge and the Ellropeans;~ and JamcsTurner. ~C harles Hodge in the Intellectual Weather of the Nineteenth Century. ~6. TMP, in Nichols, ed., p.21.7. Op.dt. , pp.201-202.8. Op.at, p.203.9. Op.dt., p.204.1O. ~ fa! r summary of this viewpoint is the helpful article bv Arie J. Griffioen,NeVin on the Lord's SUpper" in Refonned Confessr:oruilLsm in Nineteenth­Centu ry Amerlcn: ~ys on the T1wught Of John Williamson Nevin, ed. by SamHamst~, Jr.,. and Ane J. Griffiean, ATLA Monograph Series No. 38, AmericanTheolOgical Library Association and &arecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, n.d.(I996J, pp. 11 4-124. Note also Grimean's concise index of the way Nevin located'6

himself on a spectrum of teachings regarding the Lord's Supper: ~ ... Nevinargues for a real supernatural communication of Christ's incarnate life to hispeople without a local mixture with his person. Here, then is the key to Nevin'ssacramentotogy. Through the organic metaphors of romantic thOUght, hearticulates a synthetic !loteriology that forms a via media between theconflicting poles of the Protestantism of his day. On the one hand, Nevin rejectsthe naturalism· the posit ion he calls 'Socinian' or 'Rationalism withoutdisguise' . that cannot assert any real union with God because it regardsChristianity as of the same natural order as other religions, only more highlyevolved; on the other hand, he rejects the supernaturalism that allows only forthe communication of Christ's benefits through the work of the Holy Spirit. ThisIlattt:rl position, which he terms 'Pelagian,' receives the more elaborate critique,for it admits the central tenets of Christianity into its system." (ibid. p.119)Griffieon perhaps underplays here the sense in which this latter view is also oneheld by Nevin, in so far as the re is no work of Christ, including or especially themystical union with believers, that comes about without the presence andaction of the Holy Spirit: which is to say that Nevin's doctrint: of the incarnationa.nd the eucharist are fully Trinitarian. The main point, however, which I tClkeGriffioen to be making s till holds: that for Nevin, believers are really united toChrist by the power of the Holy Spirit a t work through the ordinary means ofgrace - perhaps especially the eucharist - and this union is established prior toa ny subjective persuasion of its truth on the believer's part.II. Nichols, MT, p.37 .12.Nichols, WT, pp.37, 38.13. Nichols, MT, p.39.14. Nichols, MT, p. 40.17

A Method to Their Madness: The Hermeneutics of the Modle/ Nevin DebatePeter J . WallacePastor, Orthodoll Presbyterian Church, South Bend, IndianaDoctoral Candidate, University of Notre DameI. IntroductionIn the interest of truth in advertising, let me state plainly that I have beenequally influenced by both Nevin and Hodge; and when it comes to the issues thatdivided them, let m e assure you that I cordially, but wholeheartedly. disagree withboth of them.It is a commonplace to see the revivals of tht: Second Great Awakening as animportant part of the background to this controversy. Both Nevin and Hodgea ttempted to stem the tide of revivalism in their own ways; but there is a larger set ofissues at work: 1) a s hift from covenantal to constitutional language in Reformedtheology, both in the New Divinity and more broadly in the wake of the AmericanRevolution; 2) the spread of common sense philosophy as the dominant paradigm inAmerican theology--especiaHy in Nathaniel William Taylor; 3) the l-evival movement ofCharles Pinney, which was rooted in ooth of these first two transforma tions; and 4)the social refonn movement o f the United Front which flowed from the revivals andsought to transfonn American culture into a Christian society.First, the shift from covenantal to constitutional language may be seen in thesacramental debates of the antebellum era. Presbyterians and Ba ptist tossed theirarguments back and forth, flinging out their tracts for or against infant baptism. Aperceived trend a way from infant baptism in Presbyterian c ircles led to a furiousdefense of the practice in the late 1850s. 1 The doctrine of the covenant hademphasized the corporate nature of the church, with its emphasis on communa lblessings and curses for obedience or disobedience. The newer governmental doctrine(as represented in New School Presbyterianism) focused on individual rights andresJXlnsibilitics, utilizing the langua ges of constitutional republicanism and the NewD i vinity . ~ Such a shift dc-emphasized the corporate , communal nature of the chureh,preferring a more legal and individualistic model. Hence it is not surprising that wherethe New England theology flourished, the Baptists a lso saw dramatic growth.I8

Debates about the Lord's Supper also flourished during the antebellum era.Both American and German theologians marveled a t how many American Lu theranshad abandoned their traditional belief in the local presence of Christ, in, with, andu nder the elements, adopting a Zwinglian doctrine of the Eucharist, thereby viewingt he Supper as a mere memorial.3 This transition is coincident with the rise ofrevivalism in the Second Great Awakening--a phenomenon whic h spread to many ofthe immigrant churches as well. While revivals received their initial impulse from theScottish communion season, the unchurchly c haracter of American evangelicalismsoon dropped the sacrament as too int rusive into revival preaching .• Here as well, theshift from covenantal to moral or legal tl':TTnS is evident.A !!econd feature of antebellum religious life was the spread of cornman senscrealism. This philosophical position attracted numerous adherents, at least in partdue to its democratic appeal While influential in Pregbyterian circles, theCongregationalist Na thaniel Will iam Taylor tookthe Scottish common sensephilosophy to its fuUes t extent , arguing that common senIle !l.erved al!. the final arbiterof what should be believed. As he !ltated: "It icommon !l.ensei is the competent,unperverted reason of the human mind, whose decisions in the interpretation of theScriptures are to be relied on as infallible. Man must be in some thillgs beyond thepossibility of mistake, or there is an end to all knowledg(! and all raith."S Notcoincidentally, he also took the governmental view o f the a to ncmenl furthcr thanothers within the New England tradition.Third, much of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening, at least in thenorth, was rooted in Taylor's theology. Charlc!! Finney applied Taylor's common senseapproach to preaching and called evangelicals to see more human involvement in thework of salvation. Charles Hambrick-Stowe argues that Pinney and Taylor wereworking essentially on the same project: carving out "a position that wassimultaneously within the Calvinist tradition and progre:isively and evangeliea!lyAmerican."' More t raditional Calvinists--whether John W. Nevin at Mercersburg orCharles Hodge at Princcton--tcndcd to doubt that either Pinney or Taylor hadSucceeded at thc first half of tha t project.The early Republic marked a new epoch in American history, as the new nationwrestled with the question of its nat ional identity. While the Revolutionary periodsynthesized Christian and RepUblican values, the actual influence of the churches19

egan to wane. But in the years roughly between 1790-1835 the tide turned. Asrevival swept the land, Christian leaders attempted to utilim the rhetoric ofrepublicanism and the moderate Scottish enlightenment to forge a united front thatcould maintain evangelical hegemony in the American experiment. Both in the moraland intellectual arenas, evangelical religion played at center stage. Moral refonnmovements grew out of the revivalist agenda for a Christian America; as did theevangelical colleges which dotted thc countryside in ever increasing numbers, Bothinculcated a moderate common sense realism that attempted to uphold thereasonableness of Christianity. These twin engines of revival and the Scottishenlightenment propelled evangelical Protestantism into the c ultural ascendancy, yetbore a heavy price tag. On the one hand, as Nathan Ha tc h has shown, the first third ofthe nineteenth century revealed the democratization of American Christianity and thetriumph of populist views of the church; on the other hand , as J ames Turnersuggests, the intellectual synthesis of evangelical and enlightenme nt modes of thoughtproouced a culture more concerned with scientific than wit h religious t ruth--andindeed made religion dispensable for the first time.?The disintegration of the united front began 10 the 1830s_ 8 While Scots-IrishPresbyterians encouraged revival and republicanism, they were uncomfortable withthe extremes of the heirs of J onathan Edwards in New England. The Old School! NewSchool split in 1837 demonstrated the uneasiness that some Old School Presbyteriansfelt about the effects of the New England theology and polity, and the schisms of otherdenominations over slavery during the next two decades unveiled a sec tionaJ rift in themovement.' Baptists and Methodists had already gained numerica l predominance bythe 1820s, but as they began to establish their own schools and denominationalstructures they preferred to retain control over their own endeavors, a nd thecooperative ventures of the united front gradually collapsed. At the same time theproliferation of restorationist groups, the fragmentation of existing churches, and theintroduction of various immigrant bodies led to a bewildering variety of religiousdenominations. By the 1840s John Winebrenner counted over seventy in his History ojAU the Religious Denominations in the United $tates. l OAt the same time the intellectual alignment of Common Sense Realism andRepublicanism faced the new challenges of German and English romanticism andidealism. The 1830s launched the Transcendentalists in New England and the Oxford20

Movemen In B n ',ru'n•as well as the historicist studies of John Williamson Nevin. ThisScottish " Presbyterian eventually became the most Gennan thinker in the GermanReformed Church, as many Gennans in that denomination grew closer to theirAmerican evangelical brethren. Winebrenner, who would become one of Nevin's firstopponents in the early 18408, had left the German Reformed to found the Church ofGod in the wake of his conversion to the revivalist tradition.!!In this context John Williamson Nevin and Charles I-lodge engaged in one of themost interesting theological debates of the century. Hodge participated in numeroustheological disputes throughout his fifty-six years on the Princeton faculty, andengaged in most of them in an attempt to stave off radicalism on all sides andmaintain what he considered a moderate centcr. l:2Nevi n haunted hill dreamswhispering, "the center will not holdl " As American evangelicalillm plunged headlonginto paroxysms of democracy and sentimentality, Nevin became inc reasingly convincedthat the revival mentality was part and parcel o f a deadening I'Htionalism andindividualism which was devoid of a ny true sense of Christ's objective presence in thechurch. Hodge also objected to the s ubjectivism of American evangelicalism, butcountered it with a n objectivis m that Nevin found eq ually problematic.The debate between these two theologians ill cspt'..cially interellting because 1) itwas one of the first American (.!onfrontations between Idealism and Realism. Whileboth Nevin and Hodge grew up in the Scottish Presbyterian c hurch, Nevin joined theGernlan Refornloo Church and became the most zealous defender of Gemlan thoughtand worship in his adopted home. 2) While both men attempted to stem the tide ofshallow revivalism and vapid rationalism, ironically both adopt ed intellectual stanceswhich served to undermine the very beliefs and practices whic h the)' held dear. 3)Both theologians came from the Refonned tradition and shared the same doctrinalbeliefs on the surface. Yet their understandings o f these doctrines o rten proved to belight-years apart. The philolWphical frameworks w hich both theologians utilizedcritically affected the resulling Product, crealing several rnisundcI'slandings andmisinterpretations 01 boll 'd 'I blliS! es. At the root of their debate lies a n irrcconcl a edifference over the natu"" of h' , 1'h" d. . ... IS ory. IS sced of dIsparity grew over the years anfIrst blOssomed in thei r sacram ental theology--revealing the inteHectual a nd c ulturalgap between them .2t

In 1846, Nevin published The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformedor CaLuinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.J 3 Having previously objected to therevivalist approac h in his critical treatment of Charles Finney's New Measures. TheAnxious Bench, Nevin now attempted to articulate an alterna tive form of spirituaJityand a new understanding of the church. Dissatisfied with both the revivalism of theNew School and the intellectualism of the Old School. Nevin suggested that thehistorical and theological sc holarship of the mediating theologians in Gennany couldprovide a useful paradigm for the American church. Nevertheless, as Richard E. Wentzhas pointed out, Nevin remained an American theologian. preoccupied with Americanissues and artic ulating a response that was conditioned in a uniquely AmericanfaRhion. 1• It would be misleading to !lay that Nevin "became" German, because hiswhole project was to revitalize American Christianity; he merely utilized different toolsthan most of hill compatriots. Conversely, as Walter Conser !luggcsts, Hodge was alsoinnuenced by the German mediating school, perhap!I not s o profoundly as Nevin, butnonetheless, his two years abroad did not leave him entirely untouched.15 The clashbetween these twa intellectual titans is heightened by the fa ct th

Hence Hodge attempted to translate 11.HTctin into the language and thought-forms ofnineteenth-century A menca, " "Turrelin had distinguished between Archetypal theology (God's own infinite andexhaustive knowledge of himselO and ectypal theology (humanity's derived knowledge,which is true but limited and fini te). Naturally God canno t communicate exhaustiveknowledge to finite creatures, but Turretin specifically grounded ectypal theology inthe incamation, insisting that the union of God and man in Christ gives confidencethat God can truly communicate to humanity in a way that people can understand,llRegenerate reason and sense experience have an important place because they aretnJ~ tworthy enough in their own sphere, but they must be bounded hy the Word ofGod, and not vi~ versa. Ultimately, the believer's conficfcncc rests upon the divinelyself-authenticating Word of God, the Bible. Using the traditional Aristotelian languageof causation, Turretin claimed that t he object ive cause of someone·s believing theScripture, is the Scripture itself. The efficient cause (the princ iple by which she ismade to believe) is the Holy Spirit, who produces fflith in her. The inst rumental CSUgeis the church, which is the means through which the ~riptlJre reac hes her. The HolySpirit works both objectively through the Word, and subjectively (efficienlly) in theheart of the bclieycr, impressing the truth of the Scripture upon h er mind. Those whodoubt the divine quality of the Bible do so because they lac k "a healthy faculty ofreception,' i.e. , faith. IIIHodge attempted to trclnstate t his into Scottish realist language. When Hodgesaid that we mutlt "subject Our feeble reason to the mind of God as revealed in hisWord and by his Spirit in our inner life,"lo he attempted to restate 'T'uTTetin's doctrineof formal (Word) and efficient (Spirit) causes. Throughout his work, one can see theobjective, formal, divinely authenticated Scripture paired with the efficacious work ofthe Holy Spirit, bringing the Scriptures to bear on the hearts and minds of believers.The Scriptures are perspicuous in an objective sense to everyone, everywhere, and atall times but apart from the S .. , b· " · h t'pmt s su ~eClive renewlllg, the mind cannot grasp 1 awhich is as plain as day II Y t h"' · od '. c W I e paralleling TUITelin in most respects, H ge sexpectations for the "common" " . f h. " ' ,exercis es a uman lIlteHect and moral VIrtue c ear yexceed tho:se of the :seventeenth-century Genevan.Hodge took . T .a sClentJ Ie perspectIve o n the relation o f :scripture to theology butblended it w·th d · .I a tra ltlonal Reformed view of the wo rk of the Holy Spirit. Pcrhap:s his23

most famous dictum is : "the Bib le is to the theologian what n a ture is to the man ofscience, It is his s torehouse of facts."n Hodge certainly believed in some form ofobjectivity in that anyone who worked hard and was careful with his facts shouldcome to the right conclusions. Yet for all his confidence in reason, he argued thathuman reason is essentially fl awed by sin, and in fact, "conscience is less liable to CITthan reason," yet neither is ultimately trustworthy.~ 3This preeminence of the moralsense over the rational is often reflected in his comments on what "all (or mostl goodand pious men" believe o r se nse. But note the qualifier. Hodge believed that one'smoral intuitions could be damaged by sin--and repaired by grace. Scholars have oftenneglected Hodge's dual emphas i~on Wo rd and Spirit: "we find in the Bible the norma nd standard of all genuine rdigioll!'\ experience. The Scriptures tt'"ach not only thetruth, but what are the eHects of t he truth on the heart and conscience, when a ppliedwith saving power by the Holy Ghosl."24 Indeed, "all the truths taught by our nature orby religious experience, are recogniud and authenticated in the Scriptures ,,··IThe goalis] to subject our feeble reason to the mind of God as revealed in his Word and by hisSpirit in our inner Iife ."::1&The objective word of God is u nderstood through thesubjective work of the Holy Spirit: "As only those who have a moral nature can discernmoral truth, so those only who are spiritually minded can truly leceive the things ofthe Spirit."2i1Hence Hodge's objectivist theological method did not rule out thesubjective work of the Spirit in t he process of the assimilation of the Scriptures'content.:nThis IS precisely what John Nevin would have leaJ11ed from Alexander, Miller,and Hodge at Princeton, but his thought gradually shifted as he examined thephilosophical and theological trends stemming from Germany. The tuming point camewhen he arrived at Mercenburg and encountered Friedrich A. Rauch during the firstyear of his tenure. Rauch introduced Nevin to Hegelian psychology, stoking Nevin'sincreasing passion for German idealism. When Rauch suddenly died the followingyear, Nevin succeeded him as president of Marshall College, and served a s his literaryexecutor.2:IRejecting Hodge's induc tive approach to theology, Nevi n argucd that the Bible isnot the substance of revelation , rather it is the record o f it. It cannot be made into thefirst principle of theology, but instead is the standard by which our theologies must bejudged.29 This c hallenged both Turretin a nd Hodge by denying that Scripture is the24

fonnal or objective source of revelation. The formal principle of theology for Nevin isnot Scripture, but Christ. While this sounds fine on the surface, it leaves open thedoor for theologizing about anything that we think points us to Christ.30Nevin argues that everyone approaches the Scriptures from a certain theologicalstand· point, which determines the result of all exegesis. In order to come up with theright exegesis, therefore, one must already have the right theology, which is onlyattained by those who have an inner sympathy with the Biblical writers, Which, heclaimed, only Christians can have. 3 1 F\lrther, Nevin insisted that a theology consists ofa coherent whole, a unity which cannot be partially accepted and partially rejected.Either one enters into the life of the whole, or else one simply r~rvcrts and distorts itinto an entirely different system. 3~This deductive method was built upon Nevin's conception of Christianity as aLife. Christianity is not a doctrine, but a fact. It is a new creation in Christ, not merelythe imnge of Christ formed in believers, but Christ hirnsdf.33 The Rible contains "3glorious !lystem of facts, organically oound together and growing out of each other, asa single sUpernatural whole: 3 • While the language of "facts" resonated with HOOge·sdoctrine, this approach took precisely the opposite route fro m the inductive methOOadvocated by Hodge. 3S Nevin fonnulated his doctrine, and then tested it to see ifScripture agreed. In his mind, this was the only methoo of exegesis possible. Heargued that Hodge read his own ultra·CaIvinist views im o the ttxt o f Ephesians, butthis did not surprise him, because "our theology, or want of t heology, must alwaysrule our exegesis.' Nevin insisted upon a Romantic "inward correspondence andsympathy of mind on the part of the expositor, with the world of tntth which he iscalled to expound." Objective, detached exegesis, for Nevin, could never exist. ' It maysound well, to talk of coming to the Scriptures without any theory or scheme; butthere is not in fact, and cannot be, any such freedom from all prepol'lsession.'36Nevin's presuppositionalism and historiciam led him to reject the objectivisttheories of Hodge and the common sense school. Yet he did not fall into relativismbecause he was convinced, not only that it was possible to havc the proper "inwardsympathy' with the Biblical authors, but that he had enough of it to detennine thetruth of Christianity. He did not fault Hodge for building upon his own preconceivedsystem and theory; indeed he applauded him for being so consistently unashamed ofhis own theological tradition and chastised those who thought they could escape such25

iases. Instead, he argued that Hodge d id not have a proper sympathy with the NewTestament authors, and therefore missed the heart of what they were trying to say.Nevin believed that while everyone looks through a framework, it was s till possible tocome to a true understanding of biblical teaching.'"These philosophical and theological d ifferences ultimately rest upon differentconceptions of history. Hodge and Nevin approached history with entirely d ifferentquestions and presuppositions. Hodge sometimes had a difficult time understandingthe nuances of historical development because he believed tha t one could examine thepast objectively. He recognized that words changed meaning in different contexts, buthe tended to treat the documents in a rather ahistorical manner. He thcrefore wasguilty a t times, as Nevin put it, of "lumping the authorities to suit his own mind, andruling their testimony thus to suc h results as the investigation in his judgment is feltto require."31 Still, he seemed to understand the desire for u nity that penetrated theRefonners better than Nevin, and he clearly perceived that confessions often entailedcompromises, where Nevin tried to fi nd the embodiment of the church's organic life .It would be u n fair to suggest that Hodge did nOl know the Refonners. Hisdetractors have usually been so en amored of the Mercersburg theologians that theytake Nevin's every criticism fo r granted. Hodge's writings all church history reveal acompetent knowk.'

and even of its opponents." Hence foreigners could easily misunderstand what wasactually intended.39 While certainly not an historicist, Hodge a t least sympathized withthe difficulty of understanding the Gennan mind, and usually relied upon Gennaninterpretations of German theologians, rather than venture into muddy waters. Butwhen dangerous German ideas noatcd over to his side of the Atlantic, Hooge took theplunge.Hodge himself held to a weak fonn of the historical development of doctrine.The system of doctrine supernaturally revealed cannot change. but rather, there hasbeen a 'continual and gradual progress ... in theological knowled ge. "4O Hooge claimed tosee this in the history of the Church. Doctrines that wr.rc confused and jX)Od y statedcame into gn-..atcr light over time. ' [ t is true then, as an historical fa c t, that the Churchhas advanced: .1 Yet advance is no t the only option. -A later age may be inferior to aprevious one ... there are often periods of bac ksliding ... . [Butl the Church is alwaysequally near to Christ and to the holy Scriptures as the source of life."4l Even as aChristian grows gradually in the knowledge of the Bible, so also does the Churchcollectively grow. While false views might also c reep in from time to time, a gradualprogress of true knowledge should restllt.43But Hodge explici tly fonnulated his VIew of historica.l development to opposeNevin's 'lheol)' of the organic development of the Church .... With them the universe isthe self· manifestation and evolution of the absolute Spirit."44 1·lodge adequatelyunderstood what the Gennan school taught ; he simply rejected it. In their view, hesaid, 'Christianity is not a fonn of doctrine objectively revealed in the Scriptures.Christian theology is not the knowledge, or systematic exhibition of what the Bibleteaches. It is the interpretation of this inner life [the theanthropic life of Christ asevidenced in its natural process of development in the Church]. ' Hence, for theRomantic view, all forms of thought, whether Greek or Roman or Protestant in theirmultifarious expressions a re true and proper for their time and place, but notpennanenl, and will be superseded by even h igher fonns of C hrislian ity. ~ Hodgeobjected to :mc h a statement, becaus e (as he saw itl it overthrew revelation "as thesupernatural objective communication of d ivine truths" leaving only "the elevation ofhuman nature to a higher state, by which its int uitions of spiritual objects becomemore distinct."". While this crit icism went further than the Mercersburg theologianswished to go, it nonetheless was a fair statement of the more radical Gcnnan27

•theologians whom Hodge despised, and whose philosophy he heard echoed in thevoices of the Mercers burg school. From his treatment of historicism, it appears thatHodge misunderstood wha t the Mercersburg theology was trying to do, yet recognizedthat its mode of thought wa s ant ithetical to his whole project fo r the extens ion ofReformed theology in American culture. Hodge requ ired a commonly a=essible truththat would spread throu ghout society, co nforming all of life to the Word of God.Dialectical logic s eemed to him to destroy truth, for if a thing could be t rue for theMedieval Church. b u t no t true now, what guarantee was there of any real truth?Hooge believed t hat t he o nly possible solutions for the dilemma which Nevin posedwere the authority o f Rome and t he skepticism of Rationalism. Hooge wantedneither.47Nevin , on the other hand, wa n ted nothing to do with the individualism andempiricism of American revivalism and realism and found himself completely at homeamong the German t heologians. We have a lready seen Nevin's insistence upon a n"internal sympathy" with t he spirit of a n a ge in order to understand the h is tory of thatage. In 1849, Nevin wrote a short note in the Me~r:sburgReview on "HistoricalDevelopment; especially with regard to the history of doctrine, and of the Churchitself. His torical development consists of "growth, evolution from within, orgamcexpansion ... .it is the revelatio n of an idea, or spiritual fact, in rime." This is the case ofindivid uals , of nation s, and therefore a lso the church. The church••"historical ... because it is the power of a divine fact, whic h is forever growing itself moreand more into the con eciou llncs lI, the interior life of t he world." The church alwaysremains "o ne, holy, catholic and apostolical, from the beginning onward to the lastday.'41 Nevin s aw t hat under t he organic model, he could only d eny that theRcfonnation was a corruption of Christianity if he affirmed a doctrine of historicaldevelopment tha t recognized the validity and reality of the church throughout alla ges .4\!Nevin conceived of history in Hegelian tenns as the process of thesis-antithesissynthesis.Throughout his work there is a constant conception of earlier forms ofthought being subsumed under the newer and higher idea, without the Joss of thefirst. Hence in the new Protestantism , ' the interest of Romanism is not so Jeft behind,as to be no longer of any account; it must come in hereafter to counterbalance andCOllect again the d isorder a nd excess of the other system." The fut ure of Christianity28

,----will finally come to fullness when "the life of Catholicism is to pour itself as awholesome qualifying power" into the Protestant stream, though yielding toProtestantism 'the palm of superior right and strength. '1iOAnother example of his dialectical reasoning surfaces in his treatment of thecontroversy in the Reformed church over t he Lord's Supper. The sacrific ial aspect ofZwingli's thought was incorporated in Calvin's view, but the more perfect synthesis ofCalvin's system revealed the sacrificial aspect in relationship to union with Chrisl. TheIncarnation , for Nevin, was the ultimate dialectic, as all history and natu re togethermoved towards the union of God and Man. This was the goal of hi5tOl1' even before thefall: as nature found its highest expression in M;:m. so Man finds hill highestexpression in a union with ClOd. ' Wha t is history, but the process by which this idea iscarried forward, according to the immanent law of its own nature, in the way of aregular development towards its appointed end?" Sin merely added a foreign elementthat needed to be eradicated by the suffering o f the God-Man.51But since the chief end of history consists of the union of God and Man inChrist, therefore the church stands as the centerp i~ o f history as the continuation ofthe incamatioll in history. As suc h, Nevin argued tha t the church stands betweenChrist and the individual as the necessary instrument of 'visible organization,common worship, a regular public minisrry and ritllU /, and to crown all especiallygrace-bearing sacramenrs. To question this is to give up to the same extent the senseof Christ"s Mediation as a perennial fact.'5:1 This should c reate no opposition between"individual piety ... and sacramental grace; but rather 'personal experien ce is madesolid and real, only as it rests on grace offered and appropriated from abroad.'SJ All ofhis historical work proceeds from this theological standpoint.So just as Nevin argued for the inevitability of one's theological s tand-pointinnuencing his exegesis, he also took that same perspective into his historical work.Par this reason he vie ..... ed Hodge's theological stand-point on history as ridiculous. Inhis response to Hodge's review of the Mystical Presence, he says "The Princeton view,as we have seen, bases this representation not so much on history as on its own senseof theological propriety." Yet while Ncvin's own 'scnse of theological propriety' mayhave led him into some ahistorical assertions, on the whole he was by far the betterhistorian. He did more historical work than Hodge, but a ttempted to enter into theworld he studied and "feel with" h is subject. He saw the past as inherently different29

from the present, and therefore worked hard to understand the different thoughtfonns and perspectives in the past.A good example of Nevin's historical work, his brief biographical sketch,"Zacharias Ursinus, ",. examines the life and work of the Palatine theologian. Nevindaims that Ursinus' Heidelberg Catechism "was the product, truly and fully. of thereligious life of the Reformed Church, In the full bloom of its historicaldevelopment .... No creed or confession can be o f genuine force. that has not thisinwardly organic connection with the life it represents ."S' Yet, true to his GermanIdealism, Nevin saw the individual as a part of the whole, a ble to embody and expressthe mind of the whole: "the single mind Iwho frames itl, in such a case, must ever bethe organ and bearer of the gem:r

may explain why both of them took the ensuing debate over the Lord's Supper soseriously.Throughout his work, Nevin pointed out that Calvin's doctrine was a Ilia mediabetween the L.utheran and the Zwinglian doctrines, and that "the sacramental doctrineof the primitive Refonned Church stood inseparably connected with the idea of aninward living union between believers and Christ, in virtue of which they areincorporated into his very nature, and made to subsist with him by the power of acommon life."" Nevin focused on four basic points of contention where he believedthat the true Refonned doctrine had been watered down. i) The union of believers withChrist is not simply that of a common humanity, derived from Adam, bul rather restsupon our participation in his own nature as a higher order of life. 59 2) The rela tionshipis more than a moral union of inward sympathy or agreemenl. The Supper is morethan a sign which reminds us of Christ, or a pledge of service to Christ, it embodiesthe actual presence of the grace it repI"esents in its own constitution; namely, the verylife of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, made present to us by the power o f the HolyGhosl.60 3) The relation is also more than a legal union. While Christ is truly therepresentali\/\:! of his people, the exlcmal imputation rests at last on a real, internalunity of life, without which it would have no mf'..aning. "We partake o f his merits andbenefits only so far as we partake o f his substance."'1 4) This communion is not onlywith Christ"s divine nature, or with the Holy Spirit, but rather, through the Holy Spiritwe have a real communion with the Word made nesh; both with his deity and hishumanity. This union is real, substantial, and essential. 6~This participation inChrist's nesh and blood in the Lord's Supper is not corporeal, but spiritual;nonetheless it is real. The power of the Holy Ghost overcomes all spatial boundariesand unites things separated by great distance. The sacrament carries an objectiveforce. Grace is presented, or offered to all, but it may only be a pprehended by faith.This invisible grace is the "substantial life of the Savior himself, particularly in hishuman nature. He became nesh for the life of the world, and our communion withhim, involves a real participation in him as the principle of life underthisfonn. ... Suchis the proper sacramental doctrine of the Reformed Church as it stood in the Sixteenthcentury. "63Nevin exerts a great deal of energy to demonstrate that the modem 'Puritanical"theory has no basis in history. He examines the early Pathers and concludes, relying3J

,•,)greatly on Neander's work, that they taught some fonn of mystical union, neit her in aRoman nor a Lutheran sense, but in a general Refonned sense (because of hissensitivity to an ahistorical reading backwards, he avoids !laying it quite so blUntly).He views the Reformers as springing from the bosom of the Catholic Church in orderto prese~ that which was good and right. but that later Protestants (whom he calls"Puritans") had rejected the substance of the faith of the Church Universal concerningthe sacraments from the first days through the Reformation. His most savage blowsare aimed at the lale eighteenth and early nineteenth- century Reformed theologians,whose views he hacks apart as anti-sacramental, rationalistic. and sectarian.64But after stating the Reformed d octrine, Nevin was willing to say that it °isembarrassed with somc difficultieR ... !in! the defective form in whic h it was attemptedto bring it before the understanding.'6/ii Not, indeed, that the substance of the doctrinewas in error, but that it was connected with a false psychology that affected both theunderstanding of Christ's perso n and the persons of his people.Nevin identifies three points that need to be rethought in light o f the advancesof mooern psychology. (I). Calvin 'does not make a suffic ient distinction between theidea of the organic law which constitutes the proper identity of a human body. a nd thematerial volume it is found to embrace as exhibited to the senses."66 MaUer must betransfused with the active presence of the o rganic law in order to fonn the medium ofthe invisible law's true ou tward existence. As he later states, 'The soul to be completeto develop itself at all as a soul , mllst externalize itself, throw itself out in space; andthie extemalization is the body."67 Rejecting all forms of body/soul dualism, Nevinasserte the inseparable unity o f persons utilizing the language of Hegeliananthropoiogy, though attempting to soften its impact. (2) . Calvin has tOO muchdUalism in his anthropology, and does not emphasize the unity of persons withenough vigor, whether in the case of Christ, or in the case of his people. Christ'sperson is one and indivisible a nd t herefore to convey his life into the lives of his•people, they must receive the entire life of Christ, both human and divine. It is notenough to say, a s Calvin did, tha t the Holy Spirit imparts the vivific virtuea of Christ'sflesh to our souls. Rathe r, Christ's whole Person (i.e. , the organic law of his life) , iscommunicated to our entire persons by the power of the Holy Ghost, who ' is the vcryfonn in which Christ's life is made present in the Church, fo r the purpoaes of theh · . d ' . t" between t he individualc nshan salvation .... (3). Finally, Calvin makes no Islinc Ion32

personal life of Christ, and the same life in a generic view,69 Every m an has both hisindividual life and his general life , in which he lives both in his own person, and in hisdescendants. This is certainly true of Adam, who is both Q man and the man, in whomthe entire human race is included. In fact, all individual personalities form, in a deepsense, one and the same life. Adam lives in his descendants as truly as he lived, andlives , in his own person. This is true also of Christ. He is both a man, Jesus ofNazareth, the incarnate Word made flesh, but also, he is the man, "empha tically theSON OF MAN, in whose person stood revealed the true idea of humanity, under itsultimate and most comprehensive form.Nevin thought that these three 'scientific determinations" provided a muchneeded modification and improvement of Calvin's doctrine. He relt the need to defendthem by appealing to "the actual science o f the presenl time .... No such inquiry candeserve to be considered scientific, if it fail to take them into view ... We hold fast to thesubstance [of the old doctrine), while , for the very sake of doing so, we endeavor t.oplaee it in a ben er form."7o Convinced of the scientific truth of Hegelian anthropology,he insisted tbat A refultal to accept these principles would conltist of a rejection o f truescience. Consistent with bis stated theological method, Nevin took the scientific truthsof modem psychology, as expounded by Rauc h, applied them to t he t raditionalReformed doctrine, and then tests them by the Scriptures to see if they fit,71 Somehal,le argued that Nevin's views are more patristic than Hegelian. Certainly Nevin wasstrongly influenced by his reading of the early Fathers--as was Hegel"n--but henonetheless chose the language of Hegelian anthropology to express h is views. Heinsists that these "improvements" to the Calvinist doctrine are based on scientificdetenninations rooted in contemporary Gennan discussions of anthropology,Throughout his argument, Nevin makes no pretense of objectivity. He has aclear agenda which drives his research and writing: to restore and reform theeucharistic doctrine of the church for the purpose of establishing a piety andspirituality which will bind together the fragmented body of Christ. Revivalism,rationali:nn, and refonnism werc--as far as he could sce--tearing the church apart.The older doctrine of the church, the sacraments, and the mystical union with Christ,he hoped, would restore order and peace to God's people.Hodge did not take lightly the charge of rationalism, which he saw being aimedat the American Reformed Churches. He too was attempting to fight off the same33

enemies. He agreed that American theology was surrendering to the forces of ultraismin its doctrine of church and sacrament. But he still hoped to pull a large portion ofAmerican Protestantism-- or at least Presbyterianism--with him, and Nevin's adoptionof Hegelian and romantic language was inimical to his designs. He finTIly believed thatthe tools of common sense realism and moderate revivalism (intellect and spirit) weresufficient to persuade the church to refrain from going to extremes. [n other words,Hodge attempted to hold the middle ground between the extreme Zwinglianism of mostAmericans, and Nevin's high Calvinism.Hooge insisted upon a vital union in the Supper. We are partakers of Christ'slife, for it is not we that live, but Christ that liVf::S in us. This union, Hodge asserted, isbased upon Christ's participation wi th our nature in his incarnation, and ourparticipation with the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ, which unites us bodilyand spiritually as members of Christ, who is our head. Yet we do not partake ofChrist's human nature. The Reformed Church, Hodge insisted, tallght "that byreceiving the body and blood of Christ, is meant receiving their virtue or efficacy. Someof them said it was their virtue as broken and shed, i.e., their sacrificial virtue; otherssaid, it was a mysterious, supematural effic acy fiowing from the glorified body ofChrist in heaven."73Hodge saw that Refonners like Bucer and Calvin were trying to unify theProtestant churches, and therefore he suggested that they spoke in stronger tenTIswhen attempting to meet the Lutherans, less strong when they joined with theZwinglians. He also found the statements of the Refonners to be confusing, as tennswere used interchangeably and "out of their ordinary sense. " Nevin accused Hodge of' lumping" authorities, and of not understanding the Reformation, but rather pickingand choosing his quotes to agree with his position. 74 While this rings true in manyplaces, Hodge did bring out some points that Nevin had conveniently ' forgotten. "Hodge argued that the true Reformed doctrine of the Supper should be soughtin the merger between the Calvinist and Zwinglian strands of thought. Zwingli hadtaught that the "natural substantial body of Christ in which he suffered" was eatennot 'coll>Orally, or as to its essence, but spiritually only; which for Zwingli meantfeeding on him with the mind and the spirit by faith.7i To believe, therefore is to eat,and to eat, is to believe.34

Hodge admitted that Calvin had a more extreme view , but said that theGenevan Reformer had utilized both views and could be quoted by either side. Whatinterested him more was the Consensus Tigurinus which Nevin had omitted from hissurvey. As the union of Geneva and Zurich on the Sacraments, Hodge saw it as one ofthe most representative documents, along with the Heidelberg Catechism and theSecond Helvetic Confession. These last two, the standards of the German ReformedChurch, had been influenced by Calvinist. Zwinglian, and Melancthonian s trands ofthought, and therefore Hodge agreed with Nevin that they well represented theRefonned doctrine.While Hodge allowed that the entire Refonned Church saw nothing eSl'lentiallyerroneous with Calvin's view, he claimed that, 81'1 it was not a congenial clement to theRefonned system, it slowly died out. Here Hodge used organic, developmentallanguage against itl'l proponents with perhaps a bit of glee. "The fundamentalprinciples of Protestant- ism are the exclusive !lonna! authority of Scripture. andjustification by faith alone. If that system live!' and grows it must throw off every thingincompatible with those princip!es."76 More importantly, in Hodge's eyes, theConsensus 'rigurinus, the Second Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechismall teach the sacrificial view, and carry more symbolical weight than Calvin, or the"dubious expressions" of the o ther Confessions. Hodge did not understand Calvin'smore covenantal understanding of the Lord's Supper because he was palt of anintellectual world that was shifting into more constitutional and govemmcntal modesof thought.Hodge was disturbed by Nevin's teaching that the Supper had an "altogetherextraordinary power." h contradic ted his undefl3tanding of the Refonned. doctrine thatthe Supper docs not convey anything that cannot be received elsewhere. For proof heturned to the Consen9u9 llgurinus, claiming that, ' what i9 figured in the sacrament9is granted to believers extra OOtUm usum (without the usc of the sacrament9)." Whileadmitting that the sacraments have an objective power, Hodge repudiated Nevin'sattribution of the source of that power and efficacy to the lIoervicc itself.77 Hodgeattempted to argue that while the Refonned church taught that C hrist is presented tous in the Supper, but cannol be appropriated by us without the work of the HoJySpirit in us to create faith, Nevin seemed to remove the work of the Holy Spirit fromus, and placed it objectively in the sacrament: ' where the way is open for it to take35

effect at all, it serves in itself to convey the life of Christ into our persons:'" Hence,Hodge claimed, Nevin taught a doctrine of ex opere operato- the sacram• cnts conveygrace to all, regardless of faith.Since Nevin had already done a considerable amount of historical work, Hodge"squick response appeared haphazard to him. Nevin saw it as a ' violently forced"interpretation, lacking in any historical sensibility. Hodge's statement that thetenninology of the Refonnation was confused demonstrated, in Nevin's mind, that "thewriter has no sense, apparently, of anything like an inward unity or wholeness in theRefonned doctrine···land robs] it of every sort of objective immanent reason and Jaw,for the very purpose of feeling himself at liberty thus to construct from its chaoticmaterial an answer to please his own taste."79 Ironically, Nevin himself was guilty ofthe 98JlIe error when he stated that Philip Melancthon was "in a certain sense, theauthor of the German Re[onned. churdt,"110 and asserted that the GelTIlan RefolTIloochurch bad never assented to Calvin's doctrine of the decrees. But not merely withrespect to the Gennan Reformed, "the doctrine of the decrees, as held by Calvin neverbelonged at all to the constitut ion of the Refomled c hurch as such; whereas thesacramental doctrine e ntered in truth into its distinctive char-clcter as a confession.""While Melanehthon certainly was one influence in the Gennan Reformed church,Nevin overstepped himself by claiming thal the Refonned church as a whole neYeranented to Calvin's doctrine of the decrees. Nevin himself was attempting to recreatea history that would befriend his own distinctive theological and cultural endeavors.Nevin utterly rejected Hodge's understanding of the Refonned doctrine of thespiritual presence of Christ, whic h Hodge located solely in the mind, and to faith . Itseems as though on this point the two theologians were simply talking past oneanother, Both conceived of spiritual presence in opposition to physical presence, but, r' tedthewhile Hodge thought of this as a presence to the mind, or soul, NevlO e ImlOad aJ'. 'tually and thereforeU Ism and spoke of it as a presence to the whole person, spm ,saw Hodge's doctrine as mere intellectual apprehension (calvin probably would havefound both views unappealing, Hodge's for being too simplistic in its conception. ofmind· . . I Hodge of course haVing, and NCVln's for its Hegelian notion of genene persons. ,n . k r Ch . l' prcsence to theo genenc persons to fall back on , could only spea 0 nS!l. . r a mcre intellectualImmaterial part of man and therefore was not concelvmg 0presence, but a real and 'true presence of Christ in the best terms he could think of,36

without utilizing Calvin's doctrine of mysterious effiuence. Nevin, on the other hand,because he saw the very essence of reality as spiritual, could not help but see Hodge'sview as woefully incomplete. Indeed, it appeared to make everything dependent uponthe believer's mind whether or not any spiritual transaction takes place, leaving theHoly Spirit as the only objective force in the sacrament, and making the grace of theSupper no different from the grace elsewhere obtained.IV. CODclusioDIf one accepts Hodge's belief in objective theological truth, and a realistepistemology, then it is dirficult to find fault with his pogition. He was !limplydefending what he con!lidered to be the essence of Christianity. His article "What isChristianity, ' ~ makes it clear that h e saw Mercersburg a s a terrible threat to theintegrity of Christianity in America. On the other hand, if one reject s Hodge's startingpoint, then Hodge appears to be a theological dinosaur who refused to lay down anddie. His whole position was founded upon an epistemology that combines two streamsof thought that gave h igh priority to the Aristotelian concept of antithesis, Scottishrealism and Reformed confessionalism.Nevin, on the other hand, found the Scottish realist conception of the worldunfulfilling. He passed through a t least two spirituaJ crises; the first when heabandoned the common sense program for idealism, and the second when he wrestledwith the lure of the Roman church. His churchly mentality, though, proved tootraditional for the majority of Americans, who were still averse to any "Old World'thinking, and had found the plain common sense approach to religion far moreappealing. His emphasis on stand~po int made him s tand out in an era infatuated withscientific ·objectivity,· but it ser.red him well, because he could tolerate the ways of themasses, recognizing tha t understanding would only come in time, as the spirit of theAmerican nation developed and grew.As opposed to Hodge's static concept of being, Nevin appropriated the Hegelianlogic of dialectic--of becoming. Porsaking objectivity as not only impossible, butundesirable, Nevin insi!!ted that all theology grows and changes in an historicalunfolding of the Incarnation in the church. Yet, while doctrine continually grows andchanges, it always retain!! its inner vitality. [t grows according to the logic of its innerlife, actualizing the potential inherent in the theanthropic life of Christ himselr.)7

EndnotesJohn Williamson Nevin, "Noel on Baptism: Mercersburg Reuieu.J (hereafter ~R)1. 2'3 (1850) 231 -265' Lyman Atwater, "The Children of the Church and sealmgO·rdinances· Biblic:';J/ Repertory and Prinrelon Review (hereafter, BRPR) 29: 1(lS57) 1-34~ Charles Hodge , "Neglect of Infant Baptism,- BRPR 29:1 (1857) 73-101; "The Church Membership of Infants," BRPR 30:2 (1858) 347-389; E. V.Gerhart "The Efficacy of Baptism," MR 10: 1 (1858) 1-44 . Each o f these authorsrefers t~ numerous 1XX>ks, pamphlets and articles on the subject.2. The transition from substitutionary (or covenantal) to govemmental (orconstitutional) to moral influence views o f the atonement are key!! forunderstanding the ba!!ic shifts in American Calvinism. Cf. Alle~ Guelzo,Edwards on Ihe \.Vill: A Cenrury Of Amen'can Theological Debafe. (Middletown:Wesleyan, 1989) 129-135; Ann Douglas, The Peminization of American CUlrure.(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) 124-130. . . .3. Nevin notes several American and Gennan [ ~lItherans on t he subJcct, poll1tmgout that tht: Lutheran Observer, the !cading Lutheran joumal in America, hadendorsed the Zwinglian position that the Lord's Supper is a m e~ ~nemori.aLSee, The Mystia:U Presence' A Vindicnlion of thE Reformed or calvamstic Dodnneof the Holy Eucharist (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1963/1846),52;"Sartorius on the Person and Work of Christ," MR 1:2 (1849) 168; "Liebner'sChristology. ~ MR 3 : I (1851) 65.1 . Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Friars: Scortish Communions and American Revivals inthe Early Modem Pen'od (Princeton: Princeton University, 1989); Paul K. Conkin,The Uneasy Center: Reformed Chrislianiry in Antebelhlm America (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina, 1995); ibid. , cane Ridge: Amerioo 's Pen/em!;!(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 19901 ,5. Taylor, Essays, I.ectures, E1c. UPOIl Seleded Topics in Revealed Theology (NewYork: Clark, Austin and Smith, 1859) 221; c ited in Earl Pope, New EnglandGaluinism and the Disruption of the Presbyterian Church (New York: Garland,1987) 72.6. Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney alld the Spirit of AmerioonEuangelicalism(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996132.7, Nathan O. Hatch The Deffwcratizalion of Amerioon Chn'sUanity (New Haven:Yale, 1989); James Turner, Withoul God, Without Creed.: TIte Origins of Unbeliefin Amerioo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985); Mark A. Noll, Princeton and rheRepublic, 1768-1822 (Princeton: Princeton University), 1989; Timothy Smith,Revivalism and SodaJ Refonlt· American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980/1957); Fred J. Hood. Reformed America: TheMiddle and Southern States, 1783-1837 (Univcnity: University of Alabama,1980); Walter Conser, Jr. , God and (he Natural World: Religion and Scienoo illAnlebeUum America (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993); TheodoreDwight i3

Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Ameriro (New Haven: Yal1970)'James ~. ~ratt~ ~ ~evin and the Antebell.um Culture W ars, ~ in ;~fOnnedConfesszonairsm. In NI~eenth-Century Amenca: Essays on the Thought of JohnVlillramson Nevzn, edIted by Sam Hamstra, Jr. and Arie J. Griffioen (ATLAMonograph Series, No. 38. Lanham: Scarecrow, 1966).9. c. C. Geen, Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational S:hisms and theComing o/the American Civil War (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985).IO.Cited in Wentz, John Williamson Nevin, American TheolOgian (New York: Oxford,1997) 88; For treatment of the period see Marsden, Soul Of the AmerialnUniversity; Hocx:l., Re/onned Americn; Hatch Derrwcmtization of ArnerialnChristianity; statistics and some moderately useful analysis can be found inRoger Finke and Rodney Starke, The Chlln:iJ.ing of America, 1776-1990: Winnersand Losers in Our Religious Eronomy (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1992).Il.ef. Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen and Philosophers. From Jonathall Edwards toJohn Dewey (New Haven: Yale, 1985); JalTlt:s Hastings Nichols Romallticism inAmerimn Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago: University ofChicago, 1961); and Charles D. Cashdollar's The 1'mns[ormation of Theology,1&30-1890: Positivism and Prolestant 71wught in Britaill and Amerial (Princeton:Princeton University, 1989).12.1Wo recent studies have examined Hodge's moderate tendencies: John W.Stewart, -Mediating the Center: Charles Hodge on American &:ience, Lan~age,Literature, and Politics,~ studies ill Refonned Theology and HIStory 3: I (Wmter1995); Peter J. Wallace , "'The Defense of the Forgotten Center:.Ch:rles Ho?geand the Enigma of Emancipation 10 Antebellum Amenca, AmencanPresbyterians (Winter 1997).13.(Philadelphia: J. S , Lippencott, 1846).14.Wentzoutlines his thesis in, Nevin, 11- 13.15.Conser, God and the Natural World, 65-74. ,.,16.As demonstrated by the fact that Nevin was chosen as Hodge s substJtute whIlethe latter studied in Prance and Gennany from 1826-28. _ .17. Peter J. Wallace, "'Turretin and Hodge on Scripture and Theology, (llnpu bhshedpaper, Wheaton College, April, 1992) 12-14.. n18.1'urretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology L Ii. 6. (Phillipsbur.g, NJ: ~~bytena fand Refonned 1993/1679). Cf. Timothy L. Phillips, ~Prancls1urret.m s ide~ 0Theology and,its Bearing Upon HIS..Doctnnef Sc . }ture" (Ph 0 dIssertatIOn,0 nl ' 'Vanderbilt University, 1986) 138-40.19, Turretin, !. Ii-v. Cf. Phillips, 74-82.20,Hodge, Systematic theology (New York, 1871-3) i, 16,2I.Ibid., 183-8.22. Ibid" 10.23. Ibid. , 6.24.Ibid. , 11.25.lbid., 16.26.lbid., 187-8; 67-68,27 . Ibid. , 187. .... n 7'heolo : Nevin and Sdtn.ff at28.James Hastings Nichols, R?ma~tlasm In ~menca 961) 4[J,. cf. Howard J. 8.A!'eroorsburg (Chicago: Umvenuty of Ch.lCago, 1 /"Ziegler, F1'ederick Augustus Rauch: Amenron Hege tanMarshall College, 1953),29. Nevin, Mystiool Presence, 63.(Lancaster: Franklin and40

30.There arc two kinds of relativism that are rooted in the nineteenth-century. Oneis the relativism of Taylor and Pinney which allows individual common sense toattain to infallibility in the private interpretation of Scripture. The other is therelativism of Gennan historicism t hat, once detached from the normativeauthority of the Word of God, results in the infallibility of every age. Hodge andNevin both strive to avoid the respective relativisms of their philosophical views,but neither provides a completely satisfactory solution .31.Hence Nevin objected s trenuously to the modem "Puritan- insistence that theBible and private judgment could provide an adequate foundatio n for theChurch, cf. · Puritanism and the Creed: MR 1:6 (1849)585-607.32."Sartorius on the Person and Work o f Christ," 165,33."The New Creation in Christ; MR 2 : I (1850) I-II.34. Mystioo1 Presence, 244-5.35. Nevin has an essentially German notion of scien ce whie h is reflected in $everalarticles: ~ Puritanism and the Creed," 59 7, 60 1; ~Wi lberforce on theIncarnation,- 164, 166; · Catholicism," MR 3 : 1 (185 1) 22 .36."Hodge on the Ephesians: MR 9: 1 (1857) 48-9; cf. "Cur Deus Hom o?" MR 3 :3(1 8 51) 226.37.lbid" 49; d . - Noel on Baptism" 242.38, Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper" MR 2:1 (1850)433.39."Dr Schaff's Apostolic Church~ BRPR 26: I (\854) 150.10. Systematic Theology I, 117.4 I . Ibid., 118.42."Dr Schaff's Apostolic C hu rch,~ 162 .43. Systematic Theology I, I 18 .44. Ibid., 118,45.lbid,,119.1b. "Dr Schaff's Apostolic Church,: 180.47.Ibid., 189-192.48. Nevin, "Historical Development: MR 1:4 (1849) 5 12-3.

-notion that Calvin's doctrine of election played the same role-so this romant'chistoriography is used in a particularly limited fashion.I57. For Nevin's ar~ume nt o n this poi n ~1 see ~Hodge on the Ephesians," MR 9: 1(1857] 47-82; Hodge on the EphesIans, Second Article: MR 9:2 (l857) 192-245. This is Nevin's clearest statement of his utter rejection of the Five Pointe ofCalvinism, o n the grounds that its doctrine of predestination vitiates as·objective. historical. organic. and concrete [church] ... the necessary organ andmedium of ,.. salvation," (226) As explained below, Hodge had already toseedout calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.58.Mysriool Presence, 54. Nevin's reference is to Institutes Ill, xi, 10. Calvin saysthat the mystica union (or indwelling of Christl ~make8 us sharers with him inthe gifts with which he has been endowed ... We put on Christ and areengrafted into h is body-in short, because he d eigns to make us one with h im .For this reason we glory that w e have fellowship of righteousness with him. ~This was a statement written against the c harge that he made naked faith thebasis of imputed righteousness, a nd does not seem to speak of subsisting withChrist by the power of a com mon life.59. Ibid. , 55.60. Ibid., 56-7.61. Ibid., 57.62.lbid.,58.63. Ibid. , 60-2.64.Mystieal Presen ce, 118-52.65. Ibid., 155.56. Ibid., 156.67. Ibid., 171.68.Ibid., 160.69.lbid.70.lbid.., 162.7 1. lbid. , 163.72.Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Eamomics, and [he Politics oJ Spirit. 1770-IB07(Carnbridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). ~.73. Hodge, ~ Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper, )0 Essays andReviews, (hereafter, Essays and Reviews) (Robert Carter & Brothers, New York,1857) 342-3.74 . Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Ch u rch ,~ 43375. Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 345.76. Ibid. , 367. . . . .77 .lbi.d., 388. Hodge quotes Nevin: "[the efficacy) belongs to the in.stlt~U~\1O t~:own nature. T he signs are bound [ 0 what they represent ... objective y Yforce of a d ivine appointment." IMP, 61[.78.lbi.d .• 389. quoting Nevin, MP, 182.79. Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church," 43 4.80 .lbid.., 52 I.81.lbid., 523.82. ~W hat is Christianity?" BRPR 32: 1 (1 860) 118-161. . . be83.1 am indebted to Cornelius Van 'Til for this. s?Ju~i on . 'T~ sl~eo (~~~~:~terfound in Van Til's The DeJense of ChnsMnrly & YTheological Seminary, nd) and The Defense oflhe Faith (P&R, 1955.42

THE LORD'S SUPPER IN PURITANISM FROM CALVIN TO JONATHAN EDWARDThoma. Schafer 8What were the distinctive elements in John Calvin's view of the Eucharist? Wemight begin by asking, "Why are there sacraments?~Calvin's answer is, "Preciselybecause we are finite, earthlxJUnd, material creatures: God must stoop. He mustcondescend to us if we are to experience communion with Him. Hence, God uses thosethings with which we are familiar, things that are part of us--water, bread. the cup-­and through them He exhibits and communicates divine reality. What are Word andSacrament? They are instruments used by the Holy Spirit to bring us to God and towork within us.The Word and the sacraments are genuine instruments. Calvin does not callthem containers, i.e. God's grace is not shut up in these particular instruments. Thechoice of words is very important. Somc medieval theologians (Hugh of St. Victor, forexample) were prepared to say that grace is delivered in the sacraments as in a boUle.Calvin doesn't like that imagery. But the bread and the cup are not simply signs; theyare genuine vehicles which convey what they signify.What then, of Christ's presence in the Sacrament? It is real, it is substantial,but it is not corporeal. Here Calvin parts from Luther. He can go two-thirds of the way:real and substantial, but spiritual rather than physically localized in the elements.Now when Zwingli says that Christ is spiritually present. he does not rnt:an whatCalvin means. Zwingli had a strong tendency toward an ontological dualism of spiritand matter which rendered distasteful the idea of containing the risen spiritual Christwith the material elements. The sacramental elements for Zwingli are signs whichdirect our fai th and lift up our hearts to commune with the risen Christ in heaven;only in his deity can Christ be present on earth. For Calvin. Christ's presence isspiritual because it is spiritually effected. i.e. by the agency or the Holy Spirit (whichis, [ think, a Pauline way of understanding Spirit). Its being spiritual does not make itthin and ail)'; it s.imply te!l~u~ how it happens. In the Eucharist we commune withChrist . both divine and human; and we do it here, not in heaven. for Christ and hishumanity condescends actually to be present with us.Yet Calvin cannot allow that Christ is corporea!Jy present in the elements,. God isbecause he is so concerned to maintain the permanence of the Incarnation.43

•incarnate in the man Jesus, including his physical body, in a unique way. Further abody is by definition localized in one place and cannot remain itself if it is spread tomany places in the universe. This spatial imagery, of course, troubled (some would sayconfused) Calvin a great deal, as it has bothered almost everyone that has sought touse it. Nevertheless, Calvin wants to hold that by the power of the Holy Spirit, thehumanity as well as the deity of Christ is present and available to us in theSacrament.Those who call Calvin's view dynamic or virtual may be missing a point. Calvindoes not say that you know only the benefits and you assume Christ is present inthem. No, what the Spirit effects is not the benefits of Christ, but the presence ofChrist, whose benefits are a lways with h im. I think this means, therefore, that Calvinis much closer to Luther than to ZwingJi on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.What l'lre the effects of the sacraments? Por one thing, a sacrament is a seal notjust a sign . What does ~seal ~mean for Calvin? [ take it that in Calvin the dominantImage is that of the stamp on a government document which certifies that thedocument has actually come from om~ in authority, that it is really the word of theperson whose word it is claimed to be. And therefore , when we take the Sacr

extent of not publicly profaning the Lord's Supper. That is why, as you know, he madesuch a fuss with the c ity fathers in Geneva over the right of the church to disciplineand exoommunicatc scandalous sinners.Let us now tum from Calvin to thc Puritans. (At the outset of this discussion •let me mention a recent book which J have found very helpful on the history of Puritansacramental theology and which you may wish to consult: E. Brooks Holifield, TheCbvenant Sealed.) Puritans are CaJvinists, as Perry Miller said, "with a diffcrence . ~Most Puritans were not Zwinglians. But they were basically practical pastors who werenot interested in the fi ne points of the continental controversy. You can read manyPuritan texts t hat talk a good deal about the sacraments but say almost notbingaboutthe manner of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. For tbe Reformers, the preciseNature of Christ's presence was crucial; it separdted Wittenberg from Geneva and bolhfrom Rome. But the Pulitans' main conc..~I'TI Swere elsewhere.Because of t heir lac k of interest in the technical points of the controversy, thePuritans can be decidedly hard to understand. They make utterly contradictorystatements. You can read one sentence and say, -Aha, that lines them up withZwingli,- You'l read the next statement and say, -My Lord, that's Lutherl" They aren'tuninformed, but the thcology of sacramental presence just isn\ the place where theirinterest lies.Where did the interests of the Puritans lie? One of their interests centeredaround experience. The expelienc ing of election, knowing that this thing, thismomentous thing, has actually happened to me or to you, that is what impreseedthem. Calvin, you recall , and thie is partly because he was part of an establishment,insisted that of course God saves only the elect. So what do you do about it? Well, youpreach the Word, you administer the Sacraments, you baptize children, you applydiscipline, and you give all the assurance to the saints that you can give, then leavethe rest to God and don't W 0rTY about it.Now, Calvin could do that because he really wasn't seriously worried about hisown election or about the election of the pious people he knew in Geneva. For onething, the very fact of being Protestant meant that you had taken a stand for the Lord.The d . ., ' nI strong assurance factor. Itoctnne of predestination was, in Calvm s VlCW, aYe ....-1 ·d Th Ch h had l'.8id ~Be1ieve._,.. aced the assurance the Church used to proVl e. e urc ,45

these thin gs, d o these things, and we'l see t hat you get along through to glory. ~ Tha tvas not possible for Protestants.The Puritans had a different situation from that of Calvin. They were not theEstablishment but were the c ritics of the Establishment. They were objectors,dissenters, subversives, a counter-culture. To be a genuine Puritan onc had to be acome-outer . One had to take a stand. That s tand was lonely for decades because thePuritans suffered defeat a lmost continually until 16'1 0. Then they were victorious, butfor only a short time, for a period of not more than twenty years. Arter that, they hadto back into the shadows again.This meant that for them, commitment a nd individual courage were veryimportant. They developed more emphaRis on experience, on the interior lifc; and theeffect on sacramental theolo&y was a tendency to subjectivism and to intellectual andpsychological explana tions of how the sacraments work. That h~ to say, for example ,that what one does by prepamfion for the Lord's Supper may be more important t hanthe moment when one actually takes the bread into his/her hands or tastes the cup.This preoccupation with the inner life leads to a certain subjectivism about thesacrament and a loss of those objective and realistic elements that are present inCalvin.Yet, with so much emphasis on preparation and the interior, the Puritansbegan more and more to latch on to Calvin's concern for the holiness of the Eucharist.The result among the Scots, for example, was the -fenting of the table" which overturnedprecisely what Lu ther and Calvin had sought to accomplish] For the greatReformers, a sacrament is not a human work; it is a testimony of divine grace. But bythe time you get to the point where you're staying away from the Lord's Table becauseyou're not good enough something very medieval has happened to Protestant doctrine.The Puritans also had a struggle with what they fclt were remnants o f "papists u perstition- in the English Church. "The Book of Common Prayer'" wrote the authorsof the Flnt Admon ition to Parliament, -is a most unperfec t book, culled and pickedfrom tha t Romish dunghill , the M ass~. This refl ected a constitutional suspicion ofexternals and ceremonies and everything that smacked of Rome. [ think this is one ofthe roots of a tendency in Puritanism to be anti-sacramental.Particularly with respect to a doct rine of the Church, the doctrine of the Lord'sSupper and Baptism a mong the Puritans became closely associated with the question46•7

of requirements for church membership. Is -birthright membership" by baptism realmembership? Is a church that o nly has this form of membership a true church? Asyou know, the non-separating CongregationaJists had a hard time being able toconvince themselves that the Church of England was still a true church. For thosePuritans, the Church is composed of covenanting. genuine. presumably eJectChristians. The Church doesn't include everybodyl It is only for those who aredisciplined and committed members. Questions of discipline were thus always gettingtied in with the doctrine of the Lord 's Supper.An emphasis came to be placed on the will of God (as the One who ga..-e theSacrament) and the will of the Christian (who by covenant becomes a member of thechurch). and so the idea of ordinanres becomes very strong among Puritans, so strongthat among Baptists and other left-wing Puritans, the question of the nature of thesacrament may get lost in a stress on the fact that God has commanded it and thuswe must do it. And the Quakers simply said that if the interior life is so important andthe externals are so unimportant, why do you need the externals at all when it comesto the sacrament? You can get a sort of spiritual dryc1caning in baptis m, and you canbe spiritually nourished in a breadless 8ucharist.The couenanl concept was a lso important among the Puritans. It was used morewith Baptism than wit h the Eucharist bec ause, as you will remember, Zwingli andCalvin had argued that t he Ch urch of the New Covenant must have infant baptism'b«:ause the Hebrews of the Old had circumcision. The Lord's Supper and itsenactment became associated with the celebration of the covenant of grace. In thiscovenant imagery. the communal character of the Lord's Supper became veryimportant (as it was with Zwingli) and thus there was increasing objection to privatecommunion. Calvin did not like private communio n either, but I don\ think Ce1vinwas as doctrinaire in his opposition to it as the Puritans tended to be. So importantdid this covenantal imagery become that among Congregationalists for whom theviSible Church was essentially the individual congregation (I realize now I'm movinginto dangerous territory herd), the Church was seen as being formed by the a ct ofcovenant And so, each congrega tio n had its written covenant.B d rt rttl from Luther's a ndecause of this, there was a tendency to epa a I eCalvin's insistence that the Church ill where the Word is rightly preached and the'ller ....... It t dcd instead to be theament, are duly administered according to the Wo.u . en47

Church where saints had come together in covenant. Thus, children were not baptizedwho were born on the journey to America until a church could be fonned by covenant.Even ministers could not act without ordination by a covenanted congregation.Have any of you seen Edward Taylor's Propamtory MeditaCions on the Lord'sSupper "" Taylor, the pastor at Westfield, Massachusetts was a ~ metaphysica1 poet". Hispoetry was discovered only in the last two or three decades. He would c hoose a text forthe Lord's Supper and write a sennon on it. Then, as his own personal preparation. hewould write a \XXm on the text. Some of these are exquisite. The edition by DonaldStanford is the best place to find them. But if you want to get a look at a certain kindof sacramental piety among the early Congregationalists, Taylor is a good place to go. Iremember getting a chuckle out of one of his poems in which he praises the wine ofthe Lord's Supper and he says how wonderful this drink is. "'fhe blocxl of Christ is ant:Clar which will nourish us to eternal life". And then, as his enthusiasm mounts, heexclaims, ~No swines swilllhis. It's beerl" which shows incidentally that Taylor had a_ry great respect for that beverage.But back to the question of the Lord's Supper and membership in the church.In New England, also, admission to the Eucharist was tied in (unhappily I think) withthe question of qualifications for church membership. Going to Communion was themAin Act which shoved that one was a full member of the church. ArgllmentRneveloped over who could be a membr.r of the church, anrl attention was rliw.rtf:d fromthe mr.aning of thO'! R3crament to the worthinr:sl; of the believer. If you rr:ad EdmundMorgAn's Ix>ok Vi$ible Sa ints, yO~1will discover that it wal; actually the New I':nglandPuritans who first tied church membership to being able to prove (to a "judgemcnl o fcharity") that one Has among the elect. With the passage of time, participation in theLord's Supper became tied to one's ability to relate an experience of conversion.This became a basis of church member.!ohip. It is part of your history asCongregationalists . By 1660, it became necessary to allow orthodox and decent but•unconverted people into a "H alf way Covenant.- Actually, the much maligned ~Ha.1fWay Covenant" was not the problem. It vas the solution. It pennitted those who hadbeen baptized but not converted to have their children baptized, provided they wereorthodox in doctrine and non~scandalousin conduct. Solomon Stoddard saw thedifficulty; we can't have the d iscipline of the church over the whole community unlellsmore people are full church members; but if they are required to say they're converted,48

well never make it. Stoddard had a solution for the problem of declining religion. Hisprescription was to cease insisting that people be converted before they are admittedto the Lord's Supper. It was not easy to prove to Stoddard that you were a Christian, [tis clear from his Guide to Chrisr that he was prepared to keep a person in one of thestages of conversion (or six months or six years before he'd let him go on to the next. Itmight take a lifetime to get converted]So Stoddard said, let's get them into the churc h and then let's preach at them.Let's give them the works. Let's s care them to death with the fear of hell. Let's get thebrimstone singeing their toenails and we1l stop the decle nsion . we' 1 be cured, becauseeven if not all of them are converted, they" be working so hard trying to get convertedthat they'l at least be good citizens and behave themselves.Now all this was tied to the sacramental piety I've spoken about. And so therewas a lot going on that was a kind of renewal within the Church when the ~GreatAwakening" came. Jonathan Edwards was brought up in this new piety_ He lists in hismanuscripts the communicant manuals of Matthew Hcnry a nd Cotton Mather andothers. And he read the m . He read the communican t manual of F'lavcl whoemphasized the fact that one can see God in stic ks and stones a nd a ll sorts of things.But, in addition, Calvin's idea of t he mystical presence of Christ as t he heart of what!lalvation is, altm got acro~s to EdWa rds.P-9ward$ as a YOllth worrit:d for year!! that he wasn\ converted accoming to theprep

e admitted to the Lord's Supper. In his manuscript "Miscellanies,· he took Stoddard'sposition and tried to work it out. Stoddard had written a book entitled. Thelnemlsabieness of Negleding the Won;hip of God under a Pretence oJ Being in anUnootwerted Condition. All Christians are commanded to participate in the Lord'sSupper. Therefore, people ought to be allowed to go, even if they don't know whetheror not they're converted. Edwards responds: yes, let all be commanded to come, but letall know that unless they arc converted, they eat and drink damnation to themselves.Under this pressure, perhaps some wil! be converted. The Supper thus becomes atechnique of evangelism. In Puritanism, it seems, the Lord's Supper was alwaysgetting caught up in other issuc~ and problems.Edwards tried to work with Stoddard's formula, but he finally concluded thatthe visible church is not meant to be composed o f everybody. It is to be made u p ofthose who have expressed a saving faith in Christ. And so, as you k now, he eventuallyhad to take a stand against his grandfather. He l.-lrgued that only those whopresumably were at least pretending to have real faith should be admitted to theSupper. Edwards did not believe that there arc "visible saints ~ ,"real" saints asseparate categories, but only visibly I"f".al saints. Stoddard, he thought, had goltenbadly mired up in his terminology. As you know, Edwards was dismissed from hiscongregation as a result of the posilion he took.Edwards' discussions of the Lord's Supper llsua!!y occur in the context of sucharguments as these. Here and there, as in the Qualifiootions fo r Co mmunion, we readthat the sacrament is to confirm faith in those that already have it, and that its mainpUrpose is not to convert people but rather /0 feed Ihe faith ofllle saints. The nature ofChrist's presence in the Eucharist is hardly discussed in the published works ofEdwards. It may come out in the manuscript sacrament sennons, some of which areto be published in the years ahead.The Great Awakening of 1740-42 ushered in the revival era. Here we canmention just two or three things. The First Great Awakening did little to change thesituation theolo";cally hccau," ,., ~......' ... .........cune. d· C I . . . .m a a Vl1UstiC selllng. It was an~awake ning- in which tht: eUlphasis was still on tht: grace of God. A revival was indeeda ~ shower of blessing.~ You ~prayed up- a revival, and if God was willing to bestow it,you had onel In that context, the Lord's Supper was usually discussed as one of themeans of grace. The big argument was whether the unconverted should try to prepare50

for conversion by using the means of grace. Edwards himself was a preparationist, buthe never allowed the matter to become an either-or. As he frequently put it, nopreparation will save you; but if you try to prepare you are more likely to be convertedthan if you don't try. For though God is s till frce to save those who have not preparedand shut out those who have tried to prepare, He doesn't seem to work that way.Some of Edwards' successors (notably Samuel Hopkins) came out against preparation:it is faith that is commanded, and nothing else we do is of any value until we actuallyaccept Christ. But others pointed out that God also commands repentance andpreparation, and seems to bless the effort expended. Withal, as time went on,preparation got shorter and shorter. What might have taken six months or six yearswith Stocldard was accomplished in a fcw days during the Pirst Great Awakening; andby the Second, in the early nineteenth century, you could expect to awaken a sinner,convict, refonn, and humiliate him and bring him through to saving faith--all in oneevening!There was also a progressive depotentiation of the revival message . Except inNew England and among some of the Presbyteria ns , the Second Great Awakening wasnot strictly Calvinistic; it had Arminian, even Pelagian ovtrtones. Out on the frontier,with Brother Finney, revivals were not so much something you prayed down assomething you "worked up~ from below. You use tcchinques; you do revivals; you callUpon men and women to convert themselves. The main ~preparation "is made by therevivalist and his helpers, and by the church community. As Finney promised in hisLectures on Revivals of Religion, if you go into a community and set up prayer groups,teach people how to put the pressure on, set up a mourner's bench (anxious bench],and the like, you're going to get the converts. It no longer depends on the pastor whoregularly preaches the Word to the congregation, or on the Lord's Supper faithfullyadministered,. The revivalist comes in from the outside, and h e gets results.A s t h e emphasis on human aCWllty. .and teehmque"meTeased,not only was thedark night of the soul before conversion shortened, the content and quality of the faithexperience itself were diminished.-until, under BiBy Sunday at the turn of thiscentury, all the sinner needed to believe in was God, decency, and America, and all heneeded to do was walk down the s awdust trail and shake hands with the preacher!. h d St t which increasinglyAlong with all this went a separatIOn of Churc an a ebee . V It' m also triumphed, asarne a separation of Church and commumty. 0 un ans51

churches were thought o f as bu ilt on the consent of those who join themselvestogether, with the emphasis on individua lism both of person s a nd congregations. TheLord's Supper becomes an incident of the church's life that we revere because we \lebeen doing it, but we 're not always s ure why we 're doin g it. If you ask m o st ProtestantChristians to tell you about th e times that have r('".ally been high points of theirreligious life, they will usually cite their conversion, or a n especia lly edifying speaker,or something of the sort. Seldom will they tel! you o f something tha t happened a t theLord's Supper or even at a n experience o f commo n worship.This has been a n a ttempt to paint with a very broad bnlsh, and to s uggest thatwe in America have tied in with t he growth o f a genuinely ·sect" concept of t he Ch urcheven though Presbyterians a nd n ow Congregationalists (as they 've gotten themselvesteamed up with the Eva ngelical and Reformed Churc h) are thinking about the c h u rchin more universal terms. Nevertheless, the trend in America (in all our c h urches) hasbeen ill the direction of congrt:gatio nal excl usivisrn , localism , voluntalis m , and non- oreven anti-sacramentalisrn.When [ was in college, I was a reader and d river fo r a blind m in is ter who hadthree small c hurches out in the hills of eastem Tennessee. On e of t hem was a poorlittle chureh that was kept alive by a n ann ual grant of $ 500 (this was in 19391 ) fromthe Women's Socicty of thc Plcsbyterian Church in Oil City , Pennsylvania. At thc time,thc ehurch was being wrac ked by a squabble over music. Thc ~old- linc"mcmberswanted to usc thc Prcsbytcria n Hymnal with its stately but slo w Scottish songs . Theyoung people met at night; they u sed, and wanted t he Ch u rch to u se, the StampsBaxtcr Songbook. (A ncv·; edit ion is put o ut every ycal" containin g nothing from theprevious edition, and wa s d esigned for the "singing co n vent i ons ~ .)One day we weretalking with the ancient Clerk of Session a bout the wholc problem and he said, "Wall,as [ see it , what they wan t is a Baptist Ch urch on Presbyt crian moneyl " Prom livingand working in the Southem Presbyteria n Church d urin g the attempted reun ion withthe Northern back in the mid- 1950's, and h aving been a more d istant observer of therecent emergence of the Presbytcria n Churc h of America, I am inclined to think thatthis is characteristic of muc h American Protcstantism--except fo r that bit about thePresbyterian money!We live in a congregationally centered non-sacra m enta l ch u rch which ha s~ordinances ~ 1h th . h' ra er an In t e more catholic, wholistic, sac ramental kind of church52-

· t which our Puritan ancestors··often with good reason--rebelled. We must faceagamsthis fact realistically and sympathetically when we address the Question, what do wedo with the sacraments today?53

A SermoD For MorolDI PrayerW. Scott AxfordPastor, First Universalist (Trinitarian Church)Providence, Rhode IslandScripture: Genesis 1: 1· 2,26-3 1Psalm 124Ephesians 1 :3- 14 (REB)In the Name of the Father, and of the Son . and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.This morning falls in the week of Trinity Octave (a nd Corpus Christi)-- and ourLessons invite u s to get persona.!. Specifically, we take up the incarnate a nd relationalnature of persons which is basic to fai thful understanding of the God revealed to us asF'ather, Son, and Holy Spirit-- three Persons. We do so from the Genesis account ofGod's Creation-- especially that of His creating humanity (as it says) in our (God's)image. We do so fro m the Letter to the Church at Ephesus which makes clear thecritical and inseparable connection of God to His plan of salvation for the wholeuniverse through J esus Christ.And, a ppropriately here, we have the help of two Princeton men, who, ironically,in their different eras, would be considered in opposition to the Princeton Theology of athird Tiger, the Reverend Dr. Charles Hodge (whose portrait I'm looking a t right now).One of them served north of the Tomato Line , at Yale, Northampton, and Stockbridge(visited by the Society in 1997) , before becoming President of Princeton in 1758: theReverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards. The other served south of the Tomato Line, aproduct of Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley, a nd of the Scottish s tock whichpervades this institution and region (tomorrow being the Peast Day of Saint Columbaof lana], and of the Princeton Theologjcal Seminary, in 1826, thence famously toMercersburg and Lancaster: the Reverend Dr. John Williamson Nevin. They providehelpful insights for our own t ime into t he Trinitarian theological malaise which hasbeset Christ's Church in our Protestant comer of the vineyard fo r far too manydecades, one whic h led the British Council of Churches to publish a study bookletentitled The Forgotten Trinity, and Notre Dame systematic theologian Dr. CatherineMowry LaCugna. of blessed memo ry, to write of "the Defeat of the Doctrine of theT · .nmty'". So, it's time to get Personal.

(Oh yes-- about the places north or south of the Tomato Line: you know, theregions above or below Manhattan. where they infest clam c howder with tomatoes,and expect people to eat iLlLet's start (briefly) in the beginning. GocI, almighty and solitary, it seems. ho...-er9way above a vast waste and darkness- covered deep. The Unmoved Mover moves, andthings come into being. God doesn't predictably create anything or us, it just happens.There is no necessary relation of Creation to Creator, although one develops soonenough. His subsequent sending of Christ shows His concern for His Creation, buteven this happens across a great , and often abstract-- impersonal-- divide.When we start with this quite common philosophical and theological worldview,it has proven very difficult to understand the profundity of a deity giving of himself,necessarily, to reconcile His sinful creation. Alternatively, or perhaps as a result, wemay leave behind such a remote and abstract Almighty in fovor of more tangible,human concerns, such as morality, or "values~,peace.or the pursuit of justice or worldYou see the problem. So did our Reverend Dr. Nevin, our first Princetonian. [nhis 1867 Theological Vindirotion of lhe Revised Liturgyl he clarified the implic ittheological problem in somc patterns of worship, writing: ~·cmay have a simplyanthropological divinity-- a mere humanitarian theology: all centering o n the idea ofman (anthropocentric); the earth again ruling the heavens, and the merely moral orethical, at best, playing itself off as the divine. Or, we may have, on the o ther hand, asimply theological divinity-- a collstruction of theology Btarting from the idea of God,considered absolutely and outside of Christ (theocentric) ; in which the relations of Godto the world, then, will become pantheistic, fantastic, visionary, a nd unreal; and allreligion will be made to resol~ itself at last into metaphysical speculations 0'­theotSopbic dreams . ~I\nd then, citing a verse from EphetSian:s I whic h is our Secund Lesson, he givesa n:tSponse which we recogni:re all one of the dcrinillg lU!;trks of the Mef(.'ersburgTheology: ' We affirm that Ithel right poim of obselVatio n is the Person of our LordJesus Christ , and that no theology, therefore, can be either safe or sound, or trulyChristian, which docs not show itself to he in this view a truly Christocentcietheology. ~ You heard thcre the key insight: staking all on the Pen;on of Jesus Christ.As he wrote in that same decade to his former student, the Reverend Dr. Henry55

Harbaugh, ·Chri$t saVC$ the world ... by what he is in the constitution of his ownperson. His person in it s relations to the world carries in it the power of victory oversin, death, and hell, lhe force thus of a real a tonement or reconciliation between Godand man.·· "3 Notice that when writing of the Christian Gospel, Dr. Nevin got personal.So much seems obvious enough once we consider it. Clearly. it is not thewOl"!hip of a remote and a bstrac t God which leads us to sing the Reverend Dr.Harbaugh's -Jesus, J live to Thee.- But there are two underlying issues which wewould do wen to consider in thi$ Trinity Sea$on if we are to connect the Mercersburginstinct for an emphasis on the Incarnation and on the Person of Jesus Christ withthe wider contemporary problem in the practical life o f many parishes of a neglected,because seemingly abstruse or irrelevant, Trinitarian under-lotanding of the ChristianPaith. Por these, we turn briefly to the work o f the Late Professor LaCugna., hefon':retuming to our s econd Princetonian, and the help they givc in further opening ourScriptures, in opposition to our third Princetonian.Dr. LaCugna, in her 1991 God Fo r Us, shows t he importance for theproc1amation a nd worship of the Church of how we understand person, or, to use theCreek term of Trinitarian discourse, hypostasis. The Church confesses onc God inthree persons-three hypostases-- but yet a God of one substance. But the pastct:nturies' elllphasis in the West on the one substance, which! suspec t we implicitlyhear at the beginning of Genesis, gives some difficulty when we then try to fi t threeperwns-- three separate substances, perhaps even three separate individuals-- intoone God. We the n o rten te nd to gaze heavenward, call all this a Mystery, allude to thereceived Faith of the Apostolic Church, a nd quickly movt: to talking about Jesus .But Dr. LaCugna gets personal righ t from the beginning of (and not, so tospeak, down the road inl the Biblical narrative. She reminds us that, contrary to theculture of russed W i d isolated individualism which Dr. Nevin and the Reverend Dr.Philip Schaff so decried at Mel't..."'ersburg, person, 01" hypostasis, should rightly beunderstood not as intransitive, i.e., as a self-sufficient underlying t.:ontent or substlUlccall its OW II , b u t, as trans itive, i.e., as an exten ul.! s ubslant:e organically in relation toother substlUlces.4 That is to say: There is no s uch thing as a pcr!lon 1101 necessarilyrelated to other persons-- not by acc ident or choice, bu t related by their very nature aspeT3Dns. Or, to use an enduring Mercersburg term, this means person 8S organicallyrelated to other persons . Almighty God , the Creator or Heaven and Earth, is thus a56

· f ~~on' d;'tinguishable in external substance yet necessarily relatedcommumon 0 ...-_ _ ,to each olher-- and not just to each other only. in some kind of hermetically-sealedFather, Son, and Holy Spirit club off in Heaven-- but by narure, creating and relatingto, and redeeming and restoring, still other persons. Thus in Genesis 1:26 we heard aTriune God saying. "Let us make human beings after our likeness"': a communion ofpersons, plural, seeking to create still more persons.Thus our second Princetonian, its onetime Yale-bred President, the ReverendMr. Jonathan Edwards, could write his 1755 Dissertation Concerning the End forWhich God Created the World, coming by another way to this very insight into thenature of God: "the diffusive d isposition that excited Cod to give creatures existence,was ... a communicative disposition in general. or a disposition in the fulness of theIdivinity to now out and diffuse itself .... Therefore," he wrote, "we may suppose, that adisposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his owninfinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world. ~6Imngine that: a Godexcited to create us-you and me-- by Ilis very nature. President Edwards called thi1l"the exceUent brightness and fulness of t he divinity diffused, overflowing, and ll.9 itwere enlarge."7The Triune Almighty's creation of the world and us creatures, and byextension.His redemption of the same through his ~ry Person, thc Son, was noaccident, no abatract Finil Principle _. really, almost no surprise. It's in God's verynature, in the nature of the communion of persons. "And God sawall that he hadmade, and it was very good.· (Genesis 1:31)The resonance of all this with Mercersburg Theology is apparent. As Dr. Nevinwrote in his The%giool Vindication , "No theology has insisted. more earnestly on thegreat cardinal truths of the Trinity, the Etemsl Genel·ation, the Divinity of the Son, theIncal1lation, the Mediatoral Work and Reign o f Chlist. .. ••The implications of this u nderstanding of persons in the natun: of God bringsus Finally to I:l second. basic point from Dr . LaCugna, one thcli rencct (..>O in our Epistleand in the Mercersburg understanding of the Church (and its Liturgicalmanifestation) __ particularly in opposition to that of the Reverend Dr. Charles Hodge.This second basic point also sound~ obvious : that we must oc"'gill all our talk orthe Doctrine of the Trinity-- i.e., of Ood-rooted in the Holy Scriptures, the Creeds,and the Liturgy of the Christian Church, and that, therefore, we must keep togetherboth lheologia and oikonomia· h r, I.e. , t e mystery 0 GOO and the mystery of salvation.57

Recall here Dr. Nevin's twin concerns of a theocentrism without Christ, and of ananthropocentrism without God, The Triune God cannot be known without knowingHis salvation of the persons God created-- as revealed in Scripture, confessed in t hecreeds, and celebrated in the Wturgy. Thus Dr. LaCugna, when she met with us inBoston five years a go, emphasized the importance of the Ephesians 1 passage withwhich she began her seminal work : as it reads in verses 4 & II. "Before thefoundation of the world lGod1 chose us in Christ to be his people, to be withoutblemish in his sight, to be full o f love; and he predestined us to be adopted as hischildren through Jesus Christ . .. . [n Christ indeed we have been given our share in theheritage, as was decreed in his design whose purpose is every'ovhere at work".Salvation and theology together, inseparable, in communion, renected in the Bible, theCreeds, and the Liturgy.As these cannot he divided, and as the Person of Christ (which Dr. Nevin placedat the very center of the Faith) cannot be Divided, so, also by its vel]' nature, theChurch cannot be divided, any more than the three Persons of the Godhead can bedivided one from another. [ndividualised congregations surely exist in this brokenworld, but we cannot see t his as the way it is always meant to be. How profoundlydifferent at this point is the ecclesiology of our very unMercersburg third PrincetonianDr. Hodge, who wrote in his 184 5 review against Dr. Schaffs Principle o/Protestantism:"The true unity of the church is, therefore, in a measure, independent of externalecclesiastical union .... lOr. Schaf~ constantly speaks as though he regarded externalunion, that is , union secured a nd expressed by outward bonds, as far mare essentialto unity of the church than appears to us consistent with its true nature."9That natu re, as our Lessons and our Tradition remind us, is constituted by aTriune communion o f persons excited into creating and redeeming other persons, fromthe beginning, before the founda tion of the world: theology and salvation together,organically and inseparably.As Dr. Nevin summarized in his Harbaugh letter. ~In thus agreeing with theCreed , the [Mercersbu rg! system of course holds itself to be to the same extent in fullagreement with the proper sense of the Scriptures; where in truth all stress is laid onthe Person of Ch rist, on his resurrection from the dead, on his glorification at the righthand of God, on the sending of the Holy Ghost, and on his presence and working"

. . h Ch h which is his body the fulne!ls of Him that filleth all inthrough all time tn t e ure 'all" Io Or, as Sain t Paul wrote to the Church a t Ephesus: -Blessed be the God andFather of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has conferred on us in Christ every s piritualblessing in the heavenly realms.- (I :3)-- to which all us redeemed persons here presentmay say: "Thanks be to God , Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.-End Notes1. Part II. 1st paragraph: in Charles Yrigoyen. Jr. & George 1-1. Bricker, eds_, Catholicand Refonned: Selected Theological Writings of John WiUiamson Nevin (ThePickwick Press: Pittsburgh, 1978). p. 367. Hereunder , "N evin ~ .2, Nevin, p.368.3. Paragraph 3, "Letter to Rev. Dr. Harbaugh ~, in Nevin, pA08.4. Catherine Mawry LaCu gna. God For Us: The Tn'nify and Ch ris/ian Life.(Hafl>CrCollins : San Francisco, 1991) p.66.S. emphasis added. All Biblical quotations from The Revised English Bible (Oxford &Cambridge University Press. 1989), from which the Morning Prayer lessonswere read.6. "A Dissertation Concerning the End For Whic h God Created the World."(Stockbridge, 1755), Ch. I. Sect. II, last Par.i in The Works of Jonathan Edwards(The Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh, 1974). Vol. I. p. 100.7 . Op. dt. , Ch. II. Sect. VII . Par. 3, in edwards, VoU, p.119.8. Nevin. p. 370.9. "Schaff's Protes tantism- (Princeton, 1815), 10th las t pal'" in Mark A, Noll, ed. , ThePrince/on Theology 1812-1921 (Baker Book House: Grand Rapids), p . 160.10, "Letter", last par., in Nevin, pAll.59

,"• ScripturesInvocatioD Of The Holy Spirit: A SermonR. Howard PainePutor Emeritus, St, Thomas United Church or ChristReadiDI. PennsylvaniaJoel 2:28-32Romans 8: 14-17, 22-27John 14 : 18-27Por several summers during my years in college 1 worked as a proof-reader in acommercial printing establishment. As a result of the experience I have always fou ndit difficult to read anything for pleasure s ince [ am always coming across typos,misspelled words, t:rrors in punctuation or poor com position . It'g gotten a lot worsewith the rising use of word processors and desk top publishing.This attitude that [ must be always looking fo r errors or correcting somethinghas affl icted me in another area of my involvement. I confess that J must always scana Euchari!ltic Prayer to see what the composer of it has do ne with the Epidesis, theInvocation of the Holy Spirit. Or perhaps! should say ~n o t d one with it.~This alertness to the importance o f this eleme nt of the liturll,Y was shaped bymy esteemed friend and colleague. Dr. Moms Slifer, who wrote his doctoraldiuertatian on the subject of the Epicles is while a student at the Ph iladelphia DivinitySchool where he studied under the mentol"ship of Dr. Hen ry Reilly Gummy who hadpublished a seminal work, The Consecration of/he t.udwrisl, some years earlier.And why is the Epiclesis so importa n t? Because it guarantees tha t theconsecration of the elements in Holy Communion is done III keeping with ancientliturgical practice. The prayers of t he people invoke the power of the t hird person ofthe Trinity to bless and sa nctify the clements from a common to a sacred use and inthe receiving of same t he t.'Ommunicants shall likewise be set apart for ministry. In aword, the Epiclesis s eparates the sacerdotal from the Evangelical Refonned, thefonnulaic from t he supplicatory.I wou ld say that this liturgical action draws warra n t from the words of Jesus tothe disciples in the Upper I~oom as recorded in the fou l·teenth chapter of the GospelaCCOrding to St. John where he says, "The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Fatherwill send in my name, he wil! teach you an things, a nd brin g to your remembrance allthat I have said to you. ~ By this promise we are assured tha t the memorial of the60

direction and a turning to God . The ceremony of baptism signifies this c hange. It is abath of regeneration , a death to the old life of s in, a rebirth, o r resurrection, into thenew life of the di vine Spirit .The Holy Spirit is the agent of this regeneratio n which alone makes repentanceeffective and secures the forgiveness of sins. The repentant sinner is by the divineSpirit regenerated a nd raised from the death of sin into the life which is livedhenceforth under the guidance of the Spirit , who dwells within, leads him, andgradually transforms him. [ believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the LifeI::verlasting. At the second advent of our Lord the body of the Christian shall be raisedby the power of the Holy Spirit, a nd there shall be an eternal 1ife in the body as well asin the spirit, with Christ a nd his c hurch . This is the remedy for the OYerspirituali7.ationof what we teach concerning life in the world to come. We are speakingof the whole person, not a disembodies spirit. In medical tenns we could relate it tothe emphasis on wholistic practice. God, through the Holy Spirit, raises us up in thetotality of our person to be with him everlastingly.When I was in college a group of us went to a campmceting in the wcxxfs northof the college town. There we were exposed to an event which was a kin to what Nevinexperienced in the Reformed Church in Mercersburg and which occasioned the writingof the Anxious Bench. What we witnessed was probably more violent than what Nevinhad seen. Having grown u p in the bosom of Mercersburg fo r me this was a shockingdisplay, but on reflection I realized that in our tradition we were tip-toeing aroundwhat we had to say about the Holy S pirit. As a result we abandon the field to theenthusiasts. There is absolutely no excus e for allowing this to happen, given thetheological reserve that is at our disposal and fo r which [ have been offering aninventory here this evening. Take heed to what it is that you pray for.63

The Mereersburc 80efetyThe Mercentburg Society has been fonned to uphold the concept of the Church as theBody of Christ, Evangelical, Refonned, Catholic , Apostolic, organic, development81 andconnectional. It affirms the ecumenical Creeds as witnenes to its faith and theEucharist as the liturgical act from which 811 other acts of worship and service emanate.The Society persues contemporary theology in the Church and the world within thecontext of Mercersburg Theology. In effecting its purpose the Society providesopportunities for fellowship and study for persons interested in Mercersburg Theology,sponsors an annual convocation, engages in the publication of articles and books,stimulates research and correspondence among scholars on topics of theology, liturgy,the sacraments and ecumenism.The New Mercersburg Review is designed to publish the plOceedings of the annualconvocation as well as other articles on subjects pertinent to the aims and interests ofthe Society.Membership in the Society is sustained by $25.00 per annum for general membershipand $10.00 per annum for students, payable to the Treasurer:The Rev. Dr. Thomaa G. Lush.PO Box 555 28 Ditzler Ave.Biglerville, PA 17307Manuscript. and Books (or ReviewManuscripts submitted for publication and books for review should be sent to;R. Howard Paine, EditorThe New Mercersburg Review762 Tamarack TrailReading, PA 19607Manuscripts should be typewritten and double-spaced. One copy of each manuscriptand a copy on 3.5" disk (WORD preferred) an: required, along with a self-addressed. andstamped envelope for their return if found unacceptable. The first page of themanuscript should carry the proposed title and the author's name. Under t he nameshould appear the "identification line", giving the title or position, the institution, andthe location. Superior numerals in the text should indicate the placement of footnotes.The footnotes themselves should be typed separately at the end of the manuscript.Ex~ ples of style for references may be found in a past issue of The New MercersburgRevaew.