How wrong can one man be?

According to Jonathan Bonomo, by the end of his review of J. W. Nevin’s The Mystical Presence, Charles Hodge had charged Nevin’s system with being nearly identical to or at least tending towards the following heterodox views at one point or another:

(1) Schliermarchian Mysticism

(2) Rationalism

(3) Pantheism

(4) Socinianism

(5) Eutychianism

(6) Mothelitism

(7) Romanism

(8) Sebellianism

Of course Nevin would not have recognised this description of himself. And Bonomo suggests number of these errors are mutually exclusive. As he says, no doubt Hodge would have said that Nevin was hopelessly confused.

In the light of this onslaught of accusations, Bonomo agrees with Gerish that Hodge employed an “essentially hostile hermeneutic” Tradition in the Modern World, p62.

Jonathan G. Bonomo, Incarnation and Sacrament: The Eucharistic Controversy Between Charles Hodge and John Williamson Nevin (Eugene, Wimpf and Stock, 2010) pp93-94

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)

The Imputation of Adam's Sin

When I was at Oak Hill I took a class reading some Augustine for which I did some work comparing the position of Augustine and John Murray on issues concerning original sin and the nature of our union with Adam: how did we sin in Adam?

Had I known about them at the time, I would have added these to my bibliography (which Mathison mentions, Given For You, p147, n59).

George P. Hutchinson, The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterian Theology (Nutley, NJ, P & R, 1972) which includes discussion of Archibald Alexander & Charles Hodge, the realistic view of William G. T. Shedd, Samuel Bird and James H. Thornwell; and Robert Dabney and John Murray.

Mark Horne has written on “Real Union or Legal Fiction? John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy with Charles Hodge over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin (with a Comparison to Robert L. Dabney)” 1997, which won the Aiken Taylor Church History Award of the Presbyterian Church in America..

From the original Bibliography:

Augustine, The Problem of Free Choice translated and annotated by Pontifex, Mark (New York, Newman Press)

Murray, John, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg, P&R, 1959)

Shedd, William G. T., Dogmatic Theology, volume 2

Eucharist a key doctrine

I've been enjoying reading about John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886) and the Mercersburg Theology in Mathison Given For You.

Mathison says (p139):

As Gerrish explains, the defense of the correct doctrine of the Eucharist was crucial to Nevin because in his judgement “what a man thinks of the Holy Eucharist is a plain index to what he will think of Christ, the church, and theology itself. Citing B. A. Gerrish, Tradition and the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978), 58-59.

And here are some bits of Nevin:

…

the Eucharist forms the very heart of the whole of Christian worship… Mystical Presence, p3

Our view of the Lord’s Supper must ever condition and rule in the end our view of Christ’s person and the conception we form of the Church. It must influence at the same time, very materially, our whole system of theology, as well as all our ideas of ecclesiastical history. p3

The eucharistic doctrine of the sixteenth century was interwoven with the whole church system of the time; to give it up, then, must involve in the end a renunciation in principle, if not in profession, of this system itself in its radical, distinctive constitution. p3

The Question of the Eucharist is one of the most important belonging to the history of religion. It may be regarded indeed as in some sense central to the whole Christian system. For Christianity is grounded in the living union of the believer with the person of Christ; and this great fact is emphatically concentrated in the mystery of the Lord’s Supper; which has always been clothed on this very account, to the consciousness of the Church, with a character of sanctity and solemnity, surpassing that of any other Christian institution. Mystical Presence p51 (Mathison, p139-140)

The doctrine of the eucharist is intimately connected with all that is most deep and central in the Christian system as a whole; and it is not possible for it to undergo any material modification in any direction, without a corresponding modification at the same time of the theory and life religion at other points. If it be true then, that such a falling away from the eucharistic view of the sixteenth century, as is now asserted, has taken place in the Reformed Church, it is very certain that the revolution is not confined to this point. It must affect necessarily the whole view, that is entertained of Christ’s person, the idea of the Church, and the doctrine of salvation throughout. Not that the change in the theory of the Lord’s Supper may be considered the origin and cause, properly speaking, of any such general theological revolution; but because it could not occur, except as accompanied by this general revolution, of which it may be taken as the most significant exponent and measure. Mystical Presence p52 (Mathison, p140-141)