The Mercersburg Theology And The Quest For Reformed Catholicity

In the mid nineteenth century, Reformed churchmen John Nevin and Philip Schaff launched a fierce attack on the reigning subjectivist and rationalist Protestantism of their day, giving birth to what is known as the "Mercersburg Theology." Their attempt to recover a high doctrine of the sacraments and the visible Church, among other things, led them into bitter controversy with Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, as well as several other prominent contemporaries. This book examines the contours of the disagreement between Mercersburg and Hodge, focusing on four loci in particular-Christology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and church history. W. Bradford Littlejohn argues that, despite certain weaknesses in their theological method, the Mercersburg men offered a more robust and historically grounded paradigm for the Reformed faith than did Hodge. In the second part of the book, Littlejohn explores the value of the Mercersburg Theology as a bridgehead for ecumenical dialogue, uncovering parallels between Nevin's thought and prominent themes in Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox theology, as well as recent debates within Reformed theology. This thorough study of one of the most creative movements in American theology offers an alluring vision of the quest for Reformed catholicity that is more relevant today than ever.

The Mercersburg theology was a protest against many of the ÒPuritan tendencies dominant in American religion in the mid-nineteenth century. Its spokesmen emphasized the catholic heritage in Protestantism and fostered the ecumenical hope of a reunion of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. They presented a high church sacramental conception, as opposed to the predominant revivalistic, individualistic, and sectarian habit of mind. The movement was generally disapproved as Romanizing and its popular influence was accordingly minimal. The two creative writers were John Williamson Nevin, the theologian, and Philip Schaff, the historian and liturgical scholar, who taught together at the college and seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Their books, tracts, and periodical articles had only a limited circulation and are no longer generally accessible, having been little regarded in the intervening years. The general stance of the Mercersburg men was parallel to that of the high church Lutherans of Germany and the Tractarians in the Church of England. The movement was the chief American counterpart to these developments, since the American Episcopalian disciples of the Tractarians could scarcely be compared to Nevin and Schaff in theological stature. The Americans were more philosophically oriented than the Anglo-Catholics, utilizing the concepts of Schelling and Hegel to interpret the classical doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation and to define the relation of private judgment to Church tradition. They were also mediators to America of much of the mid-nineteenth-century German theological scholarship. The Americans were also more conscious than the Tractarians of the implications for theology of the new historical consciousness prevalent in Germany. Schaff set forth the idea of the historical development in the same year as Newman's famous essay on the subject. But while the conception undercut the Tractarian position for Newman, the Mercersburg theology was built upon a parallel view. The evangelical catholicism of Mercersburg was most widely influential through the liturgy produced under Schaff's leadership, which has maintained a limited local continuity to this day.

This volume tells the story of a mid-nineteenth-century theological movement emanating from the small German Reformed Seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff taught. There they explored themes--such as the centrality of the incarnation for theology, the importance of the church as the body of Christ and the sphere of salvation, liturgical and sacramental worship, and the organic historical development of the church and its doctrines--that continue to resonate today with many who seek a deeper and more historically informed expression of the Christian faith that is both evangelical and catholic.

In the mid nineteenth century, Reformed churchmen John Nevin and Philip Schaff launched a fierce attack on the reigning subjectivist and rationalist Protestantism of their day, giving birth to what is known as the "Mercersburg Theology." Their attempt to recover a high doctrine of the sacraments and the visible Church, among other things, led them into bitter controversy with Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, as well as several other prominent contemporaries. This book examines the contours of the disagreement between Mercersburg and Hodge, focusing on four loci in particular-Christology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and church history. W. Bradford Littlejohn argues that, despite certain weaknesses in their theological method, the Mercersburg men offered a more robust and historically grounded paradigm for the Reformed faith than did Hodge. In the second part of the book, Littlejohn explores the value of the Mercersburg Theology as a bridgehead for ecumenical dialogue, uncovering parallels between Nevin's thought and prominent themes in Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox theology, as well as recent debates within Reformed theology. This thorough study of one of the most creative movements in American theology offers an alluring vision of the quest for Reformed catholicity that is more relevant today than ever.

The place of the Mercersburg Theology in American religious history has been widely recognized.... It is usually viewed as one of the unique movements in 19th century American Protestantism, principally because it challenged many of the prevailing theological ideas and practices of the time. Two surveys of American religious history have described it as a theologically and liturgically creative high church movement (Robert T. Handy) and as the most creative manifestation of the Catholic tendency (Sydney E. Ahlstrom) among 19th century American Protestants.

John W. Nevin was the driving force behind the Mercersburg Theology, which Sydney Ahlstrom's A Religious History of the American People notably described as "the outstanding example of the Catholic tendency in American Protestantism." The Mercersburg Theology took its name from the Pennsylvania village where Nevin taught at the seminary of the German Reformed Church from 1840 to 1851. This dissertation examines the Mercersburg Theology as Nevin's attempt to address what he perceived to be a crisis of epochal proportions. Throughout Nevin's Mercersburg writings one finds references to the "church question" as the all-encompassing problem of the day. For Nevin, the church question was not merely an attempt to assess the rival doctrinal claims of competing denominations. Rather, he urged his contemporaries to consider that the conditions for the possibility of fully Christian existence simply did not exist within the strictures of mainstream American Christianity. In short, the critical thrust of the Mercersburg Theology was to convict antebellum American Protestantism that it suffered from a lack of catholicity. In the early 1850s, after nearly a decade of prolific, creative, and controversial scholarship, Nevin resigned his professional posts, giving rise to rumors that he would soon become a Roman Catholic. In the end, he did not convert, but Nevin -- and the Mercersburg Theology itself, with its grand hopes for an Evangelical Catholic church of the future -- had clearly reached an impasse. In this contextual, diachronic reading of Nevin's classic Mercersburg writings, I argue that the Mercersburg Theology is most instructive for contemporary reflection on the ongoing Catholic tendency in American Protestantism more generally precisely at the point at which Nevin tried-and failed-to resolve the church question to his own satisfaction. I contend that there is a correlation between Nevin's inability to bring the church question to a resolution and his equally inconclusive consideration, during these same years, of the classic scholastic inquiry into the motive for the Incarnation. This is a crucial link, since Nevin insisted upon a determinant relationship between the church question and the "Christ question" (i.e., Christology). Since he refrained from settling the question of whether God would have entered human history had humanity never sinned, Nevin seems to have acknowledged that insufficiently disciplined Christological speculation threatens to reduce the ultimate mystery at the heart of Christian faith. In the same way, his failure to resolve the church question suggests that Nevin ultimately believed that to provide a clear and distinct account of "historical development" (or its absence), upon which the Reformation, and the far-reaching effects variously attributed to it, can be justified as necessary (or, conversely, categorically dismissed) remove the Incarnation from what he insisted was its rightful place as the cardinal fact of history. The unfinished character of Nevin's quest serves as a kind of parable for the "Catholic tendency in American Protestantism," which indicates why the church question continues to be raised, and suggests why its resolution continues to remain elusive.

John Nevin's vision of the church as "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" grew out of his critique of the revivalism and sectarianism that prevailed throughout evangelical Christianity in the nineteenth century. He deepens his perception of catholicity as an expression of Christian wholeness, his response to the parochialism that ruled American religion and life. He grounds congregational life and mission in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, ordered by the whole Christian tradition, which comes into focus in the Apostles' Creed. This edition carefully preserves the original texts while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography to both orient the reader and to facilitate further scholarship. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series presents for the first time attractive, readable, scholarly modern editions of the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multi-year project, it aims to make an important contribution to the academic community and to the broader public, who can at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European Reformed and Catholic theology.