Hodge v. Nevin on Calvin & Supper

I've enjoyed reading Mathison's account in Given For You (pp148-156) of the debate between Charles Hodge and John Nevin on what Calvin taught about the Lord's Supper and whether or not he was right.

Hodge wrote a blisting review of Nevin's Mystical Presence ("The Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper", Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 20 (1848): 227-78) in which, amongst other things, he argued that the classic Reformed view is that Christ’s presence in the sacrament is only “to the mind” and is only a presence of “virtue and efficacy". He dismissed Calvin’s distinction between eating as faith and eating as a consequence of faith. He argued that there is no “vivifying efficacy” from the sacrament but only a “sacrificial efficacy”. Calvin’s view of the believer receiving life from the divinity of Christ via the body of Christ by the Spirit in the sacrament was rejected by Hodge as an “uncongenial foreign element” that “had no root in the system and could not live.” The believer has no union with Christ’s human nature. There is no efficacy or objective power in the sacrament but soley in the “attending operation or influence of the Holy Spirit, precisely as in the case of the Word.”

Hodge charged that Nevin’s doctrine leads to Eutychianism and either Socinianism or Pantheism. Hodge thought Nevin’s doctrine involved an abandonment of justification by faith alone. He could not abide the High Church tone. For Hodge, Nevin’s view entails a denial of the Trinity akin to Seballianism.

Nevin’s responsed with an article with the same title (“Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper” in The Mercersburg Review 2 (1850): 421-548 reprinted in Nevin, The Mystical Presence and Other Writings on the Eucharist, ed. Brad Thompson and George H. Bricker, Lancaster Series on the Mercersburg Theology, no 4 (Philadelphia, United Church Press, 1966)).

Nevin argues that Calvin and the Reformed taught not only a mental presence of Christ but “asserted always a real presence, not simply as an object of thought or intelligence on the part of men, but in the way of actual communication on the part of Christ – a presence not conditioned by the relations of space, but transcending these altogether in a higher sphere of life; a presence, not material, but dynamic, like that of the root in its branches, and only the more intimate and deep by its distance from all that belongs to the experiment of sense.” (Nevin in Thompson, p292, p153)

According to Mathison, “Nevin effectively counters all of Hodges arguments” and shows that the relevant historical documents demonstrate that Clavin’s doctrine was the accepted doctrine of the 16^th century Reformed church. (p155)

Nevin argues that “the modern Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist … has departed from the doctrine of the sixteenth-century Reformation and of the whole ancient church and fallen into the arms of rationalism.” (p155)

Mathison says: “As Peter Wallace observes, most historians agree that Nevin clearly won the historical argument with Hodge. (Wallace, “History and Sacrament”, 199) Nevin’s reply was so thorough, in fact, that it remained the standard historical work on the Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist for over a century. The historian James Hastings Nichols wrote, “As a historical monograph, it remained without rival in English until the twentieth century.” (Cited in Gerrish, Tradition and the Modern World, 66) Gerrish wonders whether it has a rival even today.” (p156)

Mathison continues: “However, even though Nevin won the historical battle, he lost the theological war. Hodge had the greater influence on his own generation, and through the publication of his massive Systematic Theology, he extended his influence into future generations. Hodge’s sacramental doctrine continued to have many adherents to this day, while few Reformed Christians have even heard of Nevin, and even fewer are aware of his debate with Hodge.” (p156)

Letham summarizes: “When, in the 1840s, John Nevin of Mercersberg expounded the classic Reformed teaching on the Lord’s Supper, he was trenchantly opposed by some of the appointed guardians of that very theology, such as Charles Hodge. The verdict of history has been that Nevin was right and that Hodge had failed to grasp his own theological tradition.” (Lord’s Supper, p2)