American Heretics

2009-02-20T20:46:00.002-05:00

"...prayer, thanksgiving, and joy go together in a kind of indissoluble union." Gordon Fee commenting on Philippians 1:3-8.

2009-01-31T10:22:00.002-05:00

Preaching on Ephesians 2:11-13, John Calvin asserts that what Paul says of the Ephesian Gentile converts "would not be suitable at all points for our days" since "we have been baptized in our infancy." For the Genevans to apply St. Paul's exhortation to "remember that you which were sometime called Gentiles in the flesh... were at that time without Christ..." they should first remember that their ancestors were, in fact, unbaptized pagans. Then, of course, they can remember that they themselves had not always lived according to their baptisms.

2009-01-28T12:18:00.003-05:00

After giving a brief analysis of Eph. 2:11-22 and before his exegesis, Charles Hodge, in A Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians, felt the need to explain Paul's unequivocal statements in Ephesians about salvation and the Church in light of the biblical doctrine of election. He writes,

"As, however, the Scriptures always speak of men according to their profession, calling those who profess faith, believers, and those who confess Christ, Christians; so they speak of the visible church as the true church, and predicate of the former what is true only of the latter." (124)

To me this is a judicious way of putting it and should sound familiar to anyone who has read John Murray's essay on the extra-biblical character of the distinction of the visible and invisible church. I would only add that since Paul felt free to write and preach this way, so should we. I don't think it is necessary to hide from the implications of the doctrine of election. But I also don't feel compelled to qualify every biblical promise to the people of God. In other words, I don't want to take away from the promise of God in baptism by bringing up the reality of apostasy every time I baptize someone. I once heard a pastor ask the question after baptizing a child, "Is this little one a Christian now?" And then he proceeded to go through the possibilities. Better to say yes and if the baptized ever renounces his or her baptism, or it becomes necessary to warn the baptized person of the danger of sin, to remind a person that not all Israel is Israel. Who, at a wedding reception, would approach the happy bride or groom and plant a seed of doubt about whether the new spouse is sincere in, or will remain faithful to, his or her vows in the future?

2009-01-24T17:50:00.002-05:00

New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson writes about the character of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians:

"In contrast to other Pauline letters, however, the 'good news' is placed within the framework of a cosmic battle... Human alienation from God is expressed as enslavement to forces fighting God, and manifested in hostility toward, and alienation from, fellow human beings. The prime example of this hostility is the division of humanity into 'two races,' the historical competition between Jew and Gentile.

The 'good news' in Ephesians announces God's work as a reversal of this state of cosmic-historical hostility. God has revealed his mysterious plan to reconcile all reality, bringing about harmony between God and humans and therefore establishing the possibility of unity among humans themselves. The agent of this reconciliation is the Messiah [he is our peace]...The sign of this reconciliation is the church."

The Writings of the New Testament, 413.

2009-01-22T11:49:00.002-05:00

There is a multi-layered and, I think, fascinating relationship between the Jerusalem temple, Jesus' body, and the Church (and we could add, the Pauline conception of the New Creation). At different places in the NT Jesus' body is referred to as or associated with the temple. Paul repeatedly calls the Church Jesus' body and also the temple or house of God. One aspect of the relationship between Jesus' physical body and the temple that should be pointed out is that both were appointed by him to be torn down. The Church is God's rebuilt temple/resurrected Body, a temple/body not made with hands. These theological associations underscore the cosmic significance of the church and should help us to better grasp the seriousness of our getting along with one another in the Church. Paul's ubiquitous exhortations for the churches to live in harmony with one another can't be interpreted without this thicker biblical theological perspectve or they will sound (to me) like so many urgings to be nice.

2009-01-03T16:56:00.002-05:00

“The task of ministry is to lead the congregation as a whole in a mission to the community as a whole, to claim its whole public life, as well as the personal lives of all its people, for God’s rule. It means equipping all the members of the congregation to understand and fulfill their several roles in this mission through their faithfulness in their daily work. It means training and equipping them to be active followers of Jesus in his assault on the principalities and powers which he disarmed on the cross. And it means sustaining them in bearing the cost of that warfare . . .

[The minister] is not like a general who sits at headquarters and sends his troops into battle. He goes at their head and takes the brunt of the enemy attack. He enables and encourages them by leading them, not just by telling them. In this picture, the words of Jesus have quite a different force. They all find their meaning in the central keyword, ‘follow me.’”

--Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

2009-01-02T10:15:00.001-05:00

C.S. Lewis on attending church:

"My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target... If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can't do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit." God in the Dock, pp. 61-62.

2008-12-23T15:35:00.002-05:00

The Meaning of Christmas

"He performs the 'alchemy' that melts down human nature and infuses it into God." --Joseph Ratzinger

2008-12-18T14:41:00.002-05:00

Sounds Familyre Records is posting free downloadable songs from their second annual Christmas album. They also re-posted last year's project.

2008-12-12T10:57:00.002-05:00

"...the [American] churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean that the churches that have absolute congregational control. Now, in the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said 'If you could only get rid of the Bishop then you'd be a true Christian.' Well, you might get rid of the Bishop and get the local Ku Klux Klan leader."

--Reinhold Niebuhr in this 1958 TV interview with Mike Wallace

2008-09-25T15:47:00.001-04:00

In Deuteronomy 23:15-16 returning a runaway slave to his or her master is prohibited.

2008-09-25T00:14:00.002-04:00

Christians are well aware of the Old Testament Feasts that were brought into the New Testament and given full meaning (e.g. Passover, the Feast of Weeks). But the Feast of Trumpets got left behind and its almost sad to me. I would enjoy a "day to blow the trumpets."

2008-09-24T18:33:00.002-04:00

In Andrew Murray's classic devotional book Humility he defines biblical humility
over against the popular conception of humility as self-abasement. Christian humility recognizes two realities at once: by virtue of our creatureliness we are 'nothing' (that is, not God, ex nihilo) but it must go further in recognizing that as such God may be all in and through us. This union with God is accomplished in the work of Christ and the Spirit.

The failure of the children of Israel at Kadesh Barnea recounted in Numbers 13-14 illustrates this kind of true humility, and its lack, very well. The conflicting reports of the spies demonstrated two kinds of humility, one biblical, the other false. The majority reported that while the land "flowed with milk and honey" the inhabitants were "very strong, and the cities are fortified and very large, and besides we saw the descendants of Anak there... We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." Their assessment was simple and might even be confused with a humble response to these harrowing realities "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are."

The minority report of Caleb saw these same giants in the land but recommended a different course of action: "Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it." On the surface this short speech might seem to come from a certain hubris on Caleb's part. He did not even couch his recommendation in pious platitudes. But Caleb's is the humble response to the Israelites' circumstances. The reality that God's promise of victory was truly theirs was entirely owned by Caleb so that he could make such a bold assertion without equivocation. For Caleb, God was with them, God had promised, what else was there to consider? In the children of God, humility sometimes look like presumption. But it is not presumption when the foundation for their action is the unmistakable clarity of God's Word of promise to them, coupled with the ever-present Spirit of God within them.

The humility of Caleb and the hubris of the majority is finally revealed in the final act of this moment of Israel's history. After rebuking the majority for their unbelief and cursing them to a death in the wilderness, they presumed to go into Canaan anyway. Their act of heroism was foolish, as Caleb and Moses warned, because the LORD was not with them any longer. They were doomed to defeat.

2008-09-24T14:17:00.003-04:00

Some more Macro-Thematic Movements:

Out of Nothing I Called My Son (Genesis 1-2)
Out of Eden I Cast My Son (Genesis 3-11)
Out of Ur/Egypt I Called My Son (Genesis 12-50)
Out of Egypt I Called My Son (Exodus-Deuteronomy)
Reclaiming Eden (Joshua-2 Chronicles; Job-Ecclesiastes)
Out of Eden I Cast my Son [Into Ur and Egypt] (Esther; Isaiah-Zephaniah)
Out of Ur I Called My Son (Ezra-Nehemiah)
Reclaiming Eden (Ezra-Nehemiah; Haggai-Malachi)

2008-09-23T17:31:00.002-04:00

Leviticus on Original Sin:

"If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the LORD by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it--in any of all the things people do and sin thereby--if he has sinned and realized his guilt...he shall restore it in full and add a fifth to it...

2008-09-23T16:45:00.001-04:00

An Outline of Exodus:

EXODUS: OUT OF EGYPT, THROUGH THE WILDERNESS TO MT. SINAI—THE NEW CREATION OF A COVENANTED NATION FOR GOD, OR GETTING BACK TO EDEN

The LORD Delivers His People Out of Egypt (1-15a)
I. The Plight and the Players (1-2)
II. A Fiery Commissioning (3-4)
III. The People Doubt and God Renews His Promise (5-6a)
IV. Ten Plagues (6b-12a)
V. The Salvation of the LORD (12b-15a)

The LORD Cares for His People through the Wilderness (15b-18)
I. The LORD Provides Water (15b)
II. The LORD Provides Mannah (16)
III. The LORD Provides Water From the Rock (17a)
IV. The LORD Provides Victory in Battle (17b)
V. The LORD Provides Justice & Peace in Israel (18)

The LORD Moves in With His Covenant People at Mount Sinai (19-40)
I. The Covenant Cut (19-31)
A. Covenant Initiation (19)
B. Covenant Stipulations (20-23)
1. Ten Commandments (20)
2. Diverse Laws (21-23)
C. Covenant Ratification (24)
1. Vow of Obedience
2. Elders Eat with God
3. Moses taken further up
D. The Pattern for the LORD’s Tent Revealed (25-31)
II. The Covenant Threatened (32-34)
A. Sin (32a)
B. Judgment-Exile (32b-33a)
C. Salvation Promises Renewed (33b-34)
III. The Covenant Kept (35-40)
A. The Construction of God’s Tent (35-40a)
B. God and Humanity Reunited (40b)

2008-09-23T16:31:00.004-04:00

An Outline of Genesis:
GENESIS: CREATION, DAMNATION & THE PROMISE OF NEW CREATION

Creation, Damnation, New Creation, Damnation (1-11)
I. Creation, Sin, Judgment, Exile and the Promise of Salvation (1-6)
A. Creation (1-2)
1. God Speaks the Cosmos (1)
2. The Generations of the Heavens and the Earth Begin/Birth of Eden (2)
B. Sin-Judgment-Exile and the Promise of Salvation (3-6)
1. The Sin, Judgment, Exile and Salvation Promise for Adam and Eve (3)
2. The Sin, Judgment, Exile and Salvation Promise for Adam and Eve’s Children (4-6)

II. New Creation, Sin, Judgment, Exile and the Promise of Salvation (6-11)
A. New Creation: The Salvation of Noah and the Animals through the Waters (6-9)
B. Sin, Judgment, Exile and Promise of Salvation for Noah’s Sons (9-11)

Another New Creation: The Covenant with Abraham and his Offspring (12-50)
I. The Covenant with Abraham (12-25)
A. Abram from Babylon to Canaan, to Egypt, back to Canaan (12)
B. Lot Chooses Sodom, Abram is Promised the Land Again (13)
C. Abram Victorious in Battle, Blessed by Melchizedek (14)
D. God Seals His Covenant with Abram (15-17)
1. An Unconditional Covenant Cut (15)
2. Abram and Sarai Doubt the Covenant (16)
3. God Renews and Seals His Covenant: New Names & Circumcision (17-18)
E. Abraham Among the Nations (18-24)
1. Abraham a Priest for Sodom and Gomorrah (18)
2. God Judges Abraham’s Wicked Neighbors, Saving Lot (19a)
3. The Sin and Exile of Lot/Ammonites (19b)
4. Abimelech Barren, Abraham Blessed (20-21)
5. The Test of Abraham’s Faith (22)
6. Abraham Possesses the Hitites (23)
7. Abraham Keeps the Covenant Race Pure (24)
F. Abraham Dies Blessing Isaac (25a)

II. The Covenant with Isaac (25b-26)
A. Two Nations Spring From Isaac, Jacob Inherited (25b)
B. God Renews His Covenant with Abraham through Isaac (26a)
C. Isaac Blessed Among the Philistines (26b)

III. The Covenant with Jacob (27-36)
A. Jacob Takes Isaac’s Only Blessing (27)
B. Jacob in Exile (28-33)
1. Jacob Keeps the Covenant Race Pure, Esau Defiled (28a-b)
2. Joseph’s Dream at Beth-El (28c)
3. Jacob’s Blessings Multiply (29-30)
a. Jacob Marries Leah (fruitful) and Rachel (barren) (29)
b. Jacob Fathers Many Children (30a)
c. Jacob’s Flocks Multiply (30b)
4. Jacob Flees Laban (31)
5. Jacob and Esau Reconciled (32-33)
a. God Wrestles Jacob in his Night of Dread (32)
b. The Brothers Meet (33)
C. Jacob in Canaan (34-36)
1. The House of Shechem Plundered (34)
2. God Renews His Covenant at Beth-El (35a)
3. Rachel and Israel Die (35b)
4. Esau’s Descendents (36)

IV. The Covenant With Joseph [and Judah’s Redemption] (37-50)
A. Joseph Sold into Slavery to Egypt [Judah Ruthless](37)
[B. Judah Humiliated by Tamar (38)]
C. Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (39)
D. Joseph in Prison (39b-40)
1. Joseph Promoted (39b)
2. Joseph Interprets Dreams (40)
E. Joseph in Pharaoh’s Court (41-50)
1. Joseph Interprets Pharaoh’s Dreams and is Promoted (41)
2. Joseph Reconciled to His Family (42-46)
a. Joseph’s Brothers Arrive, (Dreams Fulfilled), Simeon Detained (42)
b. Joseph’s Brothers Reconciled to Him (43-45)
i. Return with Benjamin (43)
ii. Joseph Tests their Love for Benjamin [Judah Redeemed] (44)
iii. Joseph Restored to His Brothers (45)
c. Joseph Reunited with Jacob (46)
3. Joseph’s Family Settle in Egypt (47)
4. Jacob Blesses His Descendants (48-49)
5. Joseph Dies (50)

2008-09-22T20:40:00.003-04:00

Some Biblical Macro-Thematic Movements

In the language of Genesis 1-3:

Creation
Disobedience
Curse/Life Outside the Garden/Death
Redemption

In the language of Exodus-Deuteronomy:

Exodus
Idolatry/Unbelief
Life Outside Canaan (Wilderness)/Death
Promise of Canaan to New Generation

In the Language of the Prophets:

Covenantal Creation
Idolatry/Disobedience
Exile/Babylon
Return to Israel/New Covenant/Temple

The Life and Ministry of Jesus:

Incarnation
Kingdom Authority
Calvary
Resurrection/Ascension

The New Testament Christian Life:

New Birth/Baptism/Regeneration
Obedient Life of the Spirit
Participatory Suffering
Resurrection/New Creation

2008-08-13T15:41:00.002-04:00

My former professor Pete Enns is featured on today's (August 13, 2008) episode of WHYY's Radio Times, speaking about his book Inspiration and Incarnation and his recent troubles at Westminster Theological Seminary.

2008-08-13T14:26:00.004-04:00

Jaques Ellul commenting on Jonah's citing Scripture against God in Jonah 4:2

"This is a grave warning; it is not enough to lean on a biblical text to be right; it is not enough to adduce biblical arguments, whether theological or pietistic, to be in tune with God. All this may denote opposition to God. It may even be a way of disobeying him. The using of God's word to tempt God is a danger which threatens all Christians. Every time the Christian thinks he has God's word in store to be used as needed, he commits this sin, which is that of Satan himself against Christ. This is the attitude of the historian who dissects Scripture to set it against Scripture, of the theologian who uses a text to construct his doctrine or philosophy, or of the simple Christian who opens his Bible to find himself justified there, or to find his arguments against non-Christians or against Christians who do not hold the same views, arguments which show how far superior my position is to that of others."

And again,

"When we find in the Bible that which justifies us in our own eyes, when in reading the Bible we say: 'I was right,' when we see in it an argument for us and against others, when we are righteous in our own judgment, we can be certain that like Jonah we have turned the revelation against God. For what revelation teaches us about ourselves is all to the effect that we are not righteous, that we have no means of justifying ourselves, that we have no possibility of disputing with God, that we have no right to condemn others and be in the right against them, and that in this extreme distress only a gracious act of God which is external to us (though it becomes internal) can save us. This is what Scripture teaches us, and if we stick to this, reading the Bible is useful, healthy and brings forth fruit in us."

2008-08-10T15:11:00.003-04:00

If Augustine's two cities are seen in Jonah 4, a more biblical delineation is as well--that of the wilderness and the promised land. Jonah lives in a booth (the liturgical reminder of Israel's days in the wilderness) outside the walls of the city were man and beast have entered into harmony with God. There Jonah complains about God, is angry and twice states that he would like to die (the same cry as the wilderness wanderers and also their divinely appointed fate). The abrupt ending not only asks the reader if Jonah (and thus the reader also) will repent of rebellion and contempt of the promises of God, it asks if he/we will repeat the disobedience of our parents in the wilderness in the same way as Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3:7-4:12.

2008-08-10T14:20:00.004-04:00

We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self (Augustine, City of God XIV.xxviii.593).

The 4th chapter of Jonah is an illustration of this sentence of Augustine's. Nineveh becomes a heavenly city as its animals and citizens deny themselves, fasting, and turning toward God in faith. As Nineveh undergoes this transformation into a heavenly city, Jonah goes outside its gates and constructs a booth. He is complaining, angry, and wishes his own death rather than serve a God that is generous to people he doesn't like.

2008-08-09T17:04:00.002-04:00

The book of Jonah is filled with ironic elements, theological and literary. One way of highlighting the central irony of the story is in contrasting Jonah's disdain of the God of Israel's nature in 4:2 with the repentance and worship of all the heathens in the rest of the story. The Israelite and prophet is an idolater, the heathens (sailors and Assyrians at that!) are worshipers of the LORD.

2008-08-06T17:09:00.003-04:00

I have been preaching brief eucharstic meditations at the Wednesday evening prayer and communion service at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Our texts have come from Obadiah, Jonah and 1 Peter. Our NT reading tonight is 1 Peter 3:18-22.

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."

This passage has many layers worth untangling (e.g. the death, descending, preaching, resurrection subjection ascending work of Christ; the spirits in prison, the relationship of suffering in the flesh to the whole) but tonight I will try to explain how Peter's connection of Noah's ark to our baptism teaches us two things about the nature of sacraments: 1. (directly) that they are tokens of judgment; and 2. (indirectly) that the eucharist is a sacrifice of eucharistia, thanksgiving.

2008-06-30T16:06:00.003-04:00

In Praise of 'Fundamentalists'

I have a sick addiction: reading theologically oriented blogs. I have tamed this habit pretty well but things are slow at work right now so I can follow a few of the ones that I don't consider to be total train wrecks. I have noticed among the posters and commenters on these blogs that there is a recurring disdain for 'fundamentalists' whenever the subject of Christianity and culture comes up and it usually stems from the broad-minded Reformed, Episcopal or Barthian (the worst offenders) types. I don't like it. I remember John McGuckin, professor of Patristics at UTS, commenting that as much as he loved Cyril, Origen, and Gregory of Nazianzus, he would not want to spend his summer vacation with any of them. These, along with and especially Tertulian and Chrysostom, were "terrible fundamentalists," he quiped. A lot of what the Christ above culture people say starts to sound like Christ within culture after awhile.

2008-05-09T14:36:00.008-04:00

I know there's been quite the lull over here in terms of posting and also that I need to finish up the more interesting half of my Calvin v. Sadoleto reading but until then I offer this quip on Christian culture from Karl Barth (I don't think he would be any less harsh if he'd seen 'blogs').

Context: critiquing Christendom religion as one of many escape routes from the voice of conscience, crying out the fact of the righteousness of God.

"What is the use of all the preaching, baptism, confirming, bell-ringing, and organ-playing, all of the religious moods and modes, the counsels of "applied religion" "for the guidance of parents," the community houses with or without motion-picture equipment, the efforts to enliven church singing, the unspeakably tame and stupid monthly church papers, and whatever else may belong to the equipment of modern ecclesiaticism?"

2008-03-24T14:02:00.002-04:00

The University of Notingham's Centre of Theology and Philosophy has recently announced the location, theme and plenary speakers for this year's conference as well as a call for papers. David Bently Hart, David L. Schindler, John Milbank and many others will discuss "The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism." Click here for details.

2008-03-24T10:43:00.005-04:00

I know I am taking more time than a few posts projected on a short study warrants but you can't claim I didn't warn you.

That said, today I'm posting a little aside that reveals my love of books, books about theology and its history, used bookstores and birthday gifts.

My birthday was last week and I was blessed to receive about $250.00 to spend on whatever I wish with the exception of bills. For over a year I have been committed to only reading the many books on my shelf that I have never picked up or never finished in order to curb my consumption habits. But when I received this gift with this stipulation I decided that I would use it toward enlarging my library. I had in mind pre-ordering Herman Bavink's Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, and the 2nd and 3rd vol.s of John Murray's Complete Writings since I already have the other volumes in these sets and have been enjoying Murray a lot lately. I have been reading Murray and listening to many of his lectures and sermons available online in an effort to round out my understanding of Reformed theology, especially that coming out of Westminster Seminary. I also thought I might pick up Murray's Christian Baptism and Ned Stonehouse's biography of J. Gresham Machen.

That left me with a good amount leftover so last Saturday I stole away to my favorite used bookstore and came home with two bags full. Bookhaven in Philadelphia has been the most consistent source of good theological and historical literature I've ever found.

What I got:
Revivalism, Social Conscience, and Community in the Burned-Over District: The Trial of Rhoda Bement, Glen C. Altschuler and Jan M. Saltzgaber
Dogmatics in Outline, Karl Barth
The Word of God & The Word of Man, Karl Barth
Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism, Ellen Eslinger
The Rise of Puritanism: or, the Way to the New Jerusalem As Set Forth In Pulpit and Press From Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and John Milton, 1570-1643 William Haller
Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion : With Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries, Ronald A. Knox
Inventing the "Great Awakening," Frank Lambert
The Admonition Controversy, Donald J. McGinn (Awesome find!)
Errand into the Wilderness, Perry Miller
The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Perry Miller
The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, Perry Miller
Visible Saints: The History of the Puritan Idea, Edmund S. Morgan
The Complete Stories, Flannery O'Connor
Works of Richard Sibbes (1 vol. 1979 Banner edition)
The Westminster Confession of Faith (The HC Banner edition with Sum of Saving Knowledge, Directory, Covenants etc.)

There may be some others but I am at work (slow) and can't recall any.

Passed up:
Learning Jesus Christ Through the Heidelberg Catechism, Karl Barth (a mistake to leave this one on the shelf!)
The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Library of American Biography) Edmund S. Morgan
Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Joseph Ratzinger
The Spirit of the Liturgy, Jospeh Ratzinger
Vol.s 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the works of Edith Stein

Very Exciting!

2008-03-13T17:45:00.000-04:00

I have not forgotten this project!

2008-02-24T13:03:00.004-05:00

It's been a long time coming for such a small project but I have finished reading the first half of the exchange that too place between Jacopo Cardinal Sadoleto and the Genevans under John Calvin. I will follow the structure of Sadoleto's letter in these posts so I thought I would provide a basic outline of that structure to start.

The Structure of Sadoleto's Letter

I. Introductory Matter
A. Greeting
B. An Apology for Writing the Genevans
C. The Occasion for Writing the Genevans
D. A Disavowal of Philosophical Disputation

II. Sadoleto's Persuasion
A. Eschatological Salvation of the Soul is the Ultimate Good: The Common Goal Pursued by All
B. The Ministry of Christ in Bringing that Salvation to Humanity
C. The Response of Humanity to Christ's Ministry: An Excursus on the Meaning of Salvation by Faith
D. A Rationale for the Thesis that Eternal Salvation of the Soul is Humanity's Highest Good
E. Humility The Virtue Which Such an End Requires
F. The Gravity of the Thesis and its Relation to the Dilema Presented by a Non-Roman Theology and Liturgy Option
G. History, Unity, Humility and the New Commandment Commend Rome While Novelty, Dissension and Arrogance Condemn the Reformed

III. Final Entreaty to Reconciliation and the Hospitable Reception of His Messenger

2008-02-11T17:48:00.001-05:00

If I can find the discipline I will spend some time posting on the letter of Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto to the city of Geneva in March of 1539 and John Calvin's response on behalf of the Genevans.

Sadoleto moved in humanist circles, corresponded with Erasmus, Luther and Melanchthon, and was associated with central figures of the counter-reformation (Gasparo Contorini, Giovanni Morone and Paul III). A Google query turns up just enough on Sadoleto to make me wish I had access to translations of his commentary on Romans and a 1537 letter he wrote to Melanchthon. Apparently he had a special and unusually optimistic zeal for trying to win back Protestants to Rome that was, as far as I can tell, unrewarded. His primary (and rare) tactic seems to have been to employ conciliatory language in his appeals. Some post-Reformation Protestants claimed (and still claim) that his winsome approach was nothing more than flattery. Their claim, however, is unlikely due to the great lengths he went toward conciliation such that he was often suspected of heresy and even censured by his own Church.

I am looking forward to reading his letter to the Genevans and Calvin's response. I am more and more interested in discovering the precise content of the protest of the early Protestant reformers in its historical context and hope that this will help me have a clearer picture of just what happened in Western Europe in the 16th century.

2008-01-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

My former advisor and professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Pete Enns, is writing, reviewing books and posting articles at A Time to Tear Down. As always, I am enjoying his scholarship and the spirit in which he does his work. Scholarship and an irenic tone are rare in the world of theologically oriented blogs so don't miss it.

2007-11-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

The eschaton as portrayed in the Scriptures is both scandalous in its particularity and its universality. It is one name praised by all, the name of Jesus Christ. But the chorus is raised by "every tribe, tongue and nation," all the trees of the field clapping along, the stones crying out "hosanna" every animal, blade of grass, the beasts of the field and the swarming teams in the sea joining in, the birds of the air and the stars in the heavens singing and dancing in time. It is neither totalitarian uniformity nor fragmentary chaos but "good."

2007-10-29T13:17:00.001-04:00

Historical theologian Michael Horton said the following in a recent and interesting article on Evangelicalism:

"In both faith and practice, Reformation Christianity differs from the sort of Evangelicalism represented, for example, by Charles Finney, more radically than it does with Rome or Orthodoxy."

2007-10-18T16:33:00.000-04:00

For the church of the martyrs, the church to which much of the later NT writings are addressed, only two major lifestyle choices exist: a life of suffering or a life of sin. Or, maybe there is a better way of putting it, one that reflects the mentality of the Christian. There are two kinds of earthly life: first there is the life that is truly life, no longer earthly but heavenly and eternal and this true life is paradoxically characterized by suffering and death; second there is the life that not truly life, it is a life that is only a phantom of life, it is death from Adam but is, however, characterized by comfort and riches, diabolically named "the good life."

2007-10-08T13:00:00.000-04:00

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Against Naturalism and Dead Faith

In The Measure of a Man, an essay devoted to answering the question "what is man?" Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attempted to avoid the pitfalls of those who think of human beings solely in biological terms as well as those who conversely attempt to deify humanity apart from the redemption provided for in Jesus Christ. He took as a proof text Psalm 8:5, "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you cared for him? You have made him a little lower than God, and you crown him with glory and honor." For King this meant that the biblical doctrine of man undercut Marxist and Platonic views of humanity with a doctrine that is more profound. Human beings are biological, they are made by God as material beings and that is a good thing. But human beings are more than mere matter. Human beings have been "crowned with glory and honor" by God and cannot be thought of as only biological animals. King might say that there is no such thing as mere matter in the Marxist sense, especially when we think of the matter that men are made of.

King's exegesis shows up an irony of liberal and conservative politics in the U.S. That irony is that in the name of liberation Marxists/materialists/leftists accuse religion of being an opiate for the huddled masses while at the same time denying the value of those masses who are only biological animals after all. They are condemned by King for seeing man as an animal and not "crowned with glory and honor," sinner though he be. On the other side, in the name of some heretical understanding of justification by faith alone Christian conservatives, who should of all people understand the goodness and value of humanity, divorce spirituality from policy-making, faith from acts of kindness and mercy. King condemns this tendency with the following words:

"...The body in Christianity is sacred and significant. That means in any doctrine of man that we must be concerned with man's physical well-being. It may be true that man cannot live by bread alone, but the mere fact that Jesus added the "alone" means that man cannot live without bread. Religion must never overlook this, and any religion that professes to be concerned about the economic conditions that damn the soul, the social conditions that corrupt men, and the city governments that cripple them is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood." The Measure of Man, Martin Luther King Jr. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1988, 12.

2007-09-26T11:12:00.000-04:00

The question of which comes first, the Scriptures or the Church is a fairly old question. It could be answered in a few different ways depending upon how one understands the question. I don't think it is good to think about the two (the Church and the Bible) as two entities vying for authority. I think a good answer will help us see them as symbiotic.

2007-09-08T10:02:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite authors as a child and pop-theologians and Episcopalians as an adult was Maddeline L'Engle. She died yesterday. You can read an obituary here.

2007-08-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

I recently picked up the late Jaroslav Pelikan's book The Vindication of Tradition at a used book store and read it. His thoughts on tradition and innovation were so wise and measured that I decided to take some time with the first volume of his The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Returning to it having read the essays in Vindication helps to bring a cohesiveness to the History that is not apparent on its surface. (As an aside, I have always been frustrated with Pelikan, so obviously brilliant and deeply read, because he doesn't write as mechanically as most historians forcing me to re-read everything at least once. Having a few insights into his general view of history, doctrine, and tradition goes a long way.)

One theme that comes up in both Vindication and the History is the difference between what has been taught by theologians throughout the ages of the Christian Church and what has been believed by Christians. In Vindication he reminds those who attempt an ivory tower critique of Christian theology and theologians that theologians before the Reformation and especially before the 6th century viewed their calling not as to the position of professional thinker but as a spokesperson of the Church. Good theology, traditional theology, is always the voice of the Christian people as opposed to the thinker trying to make a name for himself. Pelikan cites as exemplary the phrase of an ancient theologian who knew that often, "the hearts of the people are purer than the hearts of the priests."

This theme was an interest of mine while a student at Westmisnter and Union having come from a Pentecostal background myself. After two years at a thoroughly anti-intellectual Bible college I moved toward a more educated expression of the faith in America, namely, Presbyterianism. After finishing two degrees related to the study of Christian theology and with hopes to get another one I have begun to see some of the liability that comes with educated Christianity the most important of which is a greater tendency toward heresy. Historically, orthodox Christianity has always thrived among the poor a trend that shows no signs of reversing itself today. I found it ironic to study with privileged Americans at UTS Marxist forms of theology often dispensing with orthodox doctrine in the name of rescuing God from the oppressive hegemony of European colonizers when all the while the oppressed they claimed to serve would have scorned their deficient creeds. I am all for a sort of preferential option for the poor (with the caveat that poor Christians have come up with some pretty fantastic heresies at times too) because poor Christians don't tend to waste time with demythologizing the Gospel.

In the first volume of his History Pelikan picks this theme up at the beginning of his discussion of the response of early Gentile Christianity to its Pagan cultured despisers. A common critique of the Pagans, according to Pelikan, was to accuse the uneducated Christians of "absurd myths" not unlike their ancient ancestors had believed in the Greek and Roman pantheon. He writes:

Just when the leaders of pagan thought had emancipated their picture of the divine from the crude anthropomorphism of the mythological tradition, the Christians came on the scene with a message about one who was called "the Son of God." It is not surprising, when "the most learned and serious classes... are always, in fact, the most irreverent toward your gods," that these classes should also have been the ones who vehemently resisted this message, which seemed to be a relapse into "a physical meaning of a gross kind"... Therefore they made fun of such biblical narratives as those dealing with the virgin birth and the resurrection (29).

The parallels to modern attacks against orthodox Christian doctrine are striking.

2007-06-18T12:55:00.000-04:00

St. Augustine's Preferential Option for the Poor

For Augustine in the Confessions there is a sort of divine preference for the poor or common people. Augustine found himself attracted to the humility commended by St. Paul as opposed to the disposition he simultaneously discovered in the Platonists (Cf. Conf. VII.xxi.27). That Christianity gloried in weakness and the offscouring of the world also shaprly conflicted with his own ambition as an aspiring rhetorician. The crisis he faced in the garden was a real one. He would have to leave all he had hitherto pursued behind if he were to enter the Church.

Two testimonies of conversion played a crucial role aside from what he and Alypius read in Paul's Epistle to the Romans. First was the testimony of Marius Victorinus, translator of the Platonist books Augustine took so much delight in. Just as Augustine began to inquire into the Christian faith as an option he met with a Milanese priest, Simplicianus, who was glad to hear of Augustine's newfound love of Plotinus and Porphyry but astounded Augustine with the narrative of the dramatic conversion to Christianity by the very translator of those Greek philosophers Augustine had read in Latin. This philosopher and translator, Victorinus, had refused at first to make his private belief in the gospel public by joining the Church through baptism asking Simplicianus if "walls make Christians." Victorinus feared the public scorn and impact on his career that such an association would certainly have. Eventually, however, the call of the Church won out and even refused the offer of the bishop to enter the Church quietly, accepting with joy the fellowship of poor and uneducated Christians as his new family, and willingly forsaking his chair of philosophy.

A second testimony of similar character forced Augustine to face the question of becoming a public Christian. The day of his famous crisis in the garden which quickly led to his baptism he met a Christian who told him the story of three Roman s so moved by the Scriptures and the austerity of Christian monastics that they immediately forsook their posts and the prospect of marriage for the monastic life.

These conversion narratives are included by Augustine in the Confessions presumably because they spoke to his own struggle. Upon hearing the last of these he exclaimed "What is the matter with us? What is this? What did you hear? The uninstructed start up and take heaven, and we--with all our learning but so little heart--see where we wallow in flesh and blood!" (Conf. VIII.viii.19). Again in the same passage, what often is given attention as related merely to Augustine's moral struggles has as much to do with his admiration of the poor and common as opposed to the wise and proud. He sees a vision of Lady Continence surrounded by widows and virgins, old and young, men and women who, as Gerald Bonner puts it, seemed to say to Augustine, "Can you not do what these men and maidens can?" Further, the passage Augustine fell on in Romans is often noted for its ethical nature is buttressed by that which Alypius sees and applies, namely the words of 14:1, "Welcome him that is weak in faith."

The twentieth century saw the spread of Marx's conviction that religion is merely the sigh of the oppressed, the opiate of the masses in contrast to the sober intellectual elite of the West. Alongisde of this, Christianity in economically well-off Western countries increasingly lost the conflict with secularism, apparently confirming Marx's claim. As most know, the spread of Christianity continues to thrive in the majority of the poorer, so-called- "un-deleveloped" parts of the world today. Perhaps Augustine would respond to Marx's claim that while it is true that Christianity belongs to the poor, it is in fact upper-class education, values, positions of power and wealth that are the opiate of the rich.

2007-06-15T23:40:00.000-04:00

World famous blogger and the truest Presbyterian I know, Joel Garver, tells me that I am oh-so-close to being added to his link list if only I could assure him that this site is still active. Well, it hasn't been very active, largely because I have not read a whole lot lately (aside from Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose). Further, my reflective reflex seems a little dull these days.

That said, I spent the day at Fordham University's conference on Orthodox Readings of Augustine. It was not the most provocative set of presentations but that's not always the point of a conference I guess. Bellow are some thoughts sparked by some of the speakers:

Know it or not, my simplistic trinitarianism is thoroughly Augustinian. Funny how some things just hang in the air out here in the West.

[Continuing to ask a question that strikes me from time to time] Upon hearing a speaker compare the theosis terminology of Maximus the Confessor to Augustine's soteriolgical explication of grace, I wondered if Protestants have not so neutered the Christian understanding of grace (de-sacralizing it until grace is understood as mere "favor") that the errors so close to divinization are never in need of redressing in our theologies. Can we paraphrase "partaking of the divine nature" as experiencing spiritual, intellectual comfort in the promises of God's favor and still be saying the same thing as St. Peter and the Catholic tradition East and West?

Further, hearing citations of Augustine on predestination which where fully christocentric, I wondered if Karl Barth might not be on to more than we know when it comes to exegeting St Paul. Another way of putting this thought would be to ask in like manner if we have built such a wide fence around election that the error of universalism is never narrowly skirted as it seems to have been by Barth, Balthazar and St. John.

I guess the question of whether or not theology that sounds almost like heterodoxy is the proof of orthodoxy. The longer I read the Bible and talk theology with my father-in-law the more I am inclined to think such might be the case.

2007-06-08T17:28:00.000-04:00

James Hastings Nichols' two books on Mercersburg are now available from Wipf & Stock after being out of print for decades. I wish they would have come out several months ago! In Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg Nichols gives the reader a dense-for-its-size critical biography of Mercersburg's founders. Nichols demonstrates that he has read everything Nevin wrote and his treatment of Nevin's early "Puritan Career" is unsurpassed even by recent biographies. Schaff's career is probably better served by George Shriver's Philip Schaff: Christian Scholar and Ecumenical Prophet which is also out of print.

The more exciting of the two reprints is Nichols' The Mercersburg Theology which is an edited collection of important texts from Nevin and Schaff, some of which are not readily available as far as I know and each of which are given brief introductions by Nichols.

2007-05-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

Recent Interesting Posts:

J.K.A. Smith writes a letter to the New York Times responding to their attempt to make Benedict XVI into a Michael Novack.

Current President of the Evangelical Theological Society, Francis J. Beckwith explains his return to Roman Catholicism here. Related to recent thoughts posted here, Beckwith lists a re-reading of the early Church Fathers as key in his decision making process.

Carl Truman, who thinks that Roman Catholicism is the default ecclesiastic position for Christians, editorializes on Beckwith's move here.

Paul Owen thinks Evangelical conversion to Rome, "comes down to one basic question," namely, "is schism a sin of which only the children of the Reformation are guilty? Or is Rome herself still in schism through her elevation of Papal authority to such an extent that (whatever the nuancing) the Papal office loses its practical accountablity [sic.] to the consensus and spiritual wisdom of the faithful?"

Lastly, what's with certain bloggers of the Reformed confessional persuasion using the word "folk" all the time?

2007-05-01T21:29:00.000-04:00

An interesting post over at Wedgewords tries to sort out the recent history of Westminster Theological Seminary and the influence of Cornelius Van Til, John Murray and Meredith Kline. It is worth a read. I have also been influenced by the Van Til, Murray, Gaffin tradition and am not sure how Van Til's thinking leads to a higher view of the Sacraments or the Union with Christ motif. It would be interesting if Wedgewords or someone else went to greater effort to make the theological genealogy more clear.

2007-04-30T12:44:00.000-04:00

Westminster Theological Seminary professor Carl Truman laments his choice of Reformation history over Patristics as a scholar in a too-short blog entry on the value of the Fathers for Evangelicals.

There are lots of reasons Evangelicals have avoided the theology of the first three centuries, the most glaring one being that it continually challenges core theological commitments of Evangelicalism, for example our approach to Scripture and our understanding of good works. John Williamson Nevin didn't find himself unbearably uncomfortable with Reformed Protestantism until he read Cyprian on the Church and sacraments. I haven't read the Fathers much myself but my guess is that it takes a special sort of Evangelical to not only read them but to read and love them.

2007-04-25T21:35:00.000-04:00

The PCA "Report of Ad Interim Study Committee on Federal Vision, New Perspective, and Auburn Avenue Theologies" is out and can be read here.

2007-04-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

I was raised on Jesus People Christianity and the music those hippies made. There are Honnytree, Keith Green, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, and Kemper Crabb songs all somewhere in my head still. I wake up with them on my mind sometimes. This guy has been putting a lot of the more obscure Jesus music up (there are a few names I recognize, like Maranatha and Dove) and he includes the Roman Catholic folk stuff that I never heard.

2007-04-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

Wedgewords cites a paragraph from Heiko Oberman's The Dawn of the Reformation that caught my attention after reading Nevin's Mystical Presence the other night. Calvin's theology of the eucharist becomes increasingly wonderful the more I understand it (apparently I need to learn some more Latin before I can understand it even more). It can be annoying, however, in continually causing me to wonder what the big problem with transubstantiation is. With Calvin you get everything you might want in a Roman Catholic Eucharist without the hocus pocus. Which always leads me to ask, why not the hocus pocus?!

At one point, however, Calvin does more than summarise. He goes, we believe, beyond earlier positions (at least generally understood today), in a direction which not only marks him off clearly from the position of Zwingli and Bullinger but also might have provided the Maulbronner disputation with a more auspicious point of departure, if not with a formula concordiae. Dealing with II Sam. vi. 2 (’Dieu des armees habitant entre les cherubins’) Calvin applies the text to Baptism and the Eucharist: ‘We should not take these signs as mere visible things, symbols to nourish our spiritual senses, but we are to know that God there unites his power and his truth: both the res [thing itself, property] and the effectus [effect, performance] are there with the symbol; one must not separate what God has joined together.’ If we are right in concluding that with the symbol or sign (sacramentum tantum) not only the visible element but also the res sacramenti or effectus is given, a manductio oralis [eating of the mouth?] seems to be unavoidably implied. Christ ‘habite en nous par foy’ [lives in us by...eating? I don't know the French word 'foy'] To receive him in bread and wine, however, is not the effectus fidei [effect of faith] but the effectus sacramenti, [effect of the sacrament] inseperably attached to the sacrament by God. The demarcation line between the objective act of God and the subjective act of faith runs between manductio [eating] and inhabitatio, [indwelling] not between exhibitio [exhibition, what is presented in the elements] and receptio [reception, what is recieved] as the younger Calvin, the Pfaltzer theologians at Maulronn and - we may add- all those who later were to claim Calvin’s authority have taught.

~Heiko Oberman The Dawn of the Reformation pg. 242-243

2007-04-01T01:42:00.000-04:00

Down to the wire on my thesis. Bellow is a clipping from the section covering John W. Nevin's critique of the "Modern Puritan" theology of the Eucharist. I Summarize his five differences between the Puritan and Reformed view. What has been most striking to me is how many of these are the offspring of Edwards (and Locke through Edwards). Note that I have not proofed this section of the thesis yet and the footnotes are absent.

Nevin isolated five contrasts between the Reformed explications of the sacrament and these modern statements. First, whereas in the older Reformed view the nature of the Christian’s communion with Christ in the Supper was held to be “different from all that has place in the common exercises of worship,” for Dick and Dwight (who only followed Edwards’s notions on the workings of the ‘religious affections’) the Supper afforded a vivid occasion for the contemplation of divine things common to all exercises of religion.

Second, Nevin complained that what was for the Reformers a supernatural mystery had become under “the proper Puritan stand-point” as miraculous as “a common fourth of July celebration” serving only, to quote Dwight, “the enlargement and rectification of our views—the purification of our affections—the amendment of our lives.” Dwight is further quoted, characterizing the Eucharist as “simple; intelligible to the humblest capacity; in no respect burdensome; lying within the reach of all men; incapable of being misconstrued without violence; and therefore not easily susceptible of mystical or superstitious perversion.”

Third, the objective nature of the sacrament that appeared in the confessions and catechisms had been neglected, elevating the condition for receiving the inherent blessings of the meal to that of its very principle. For the Edwardseans, Nevin stated, the sacrament had become a mutual transaction in which both Christ and his people promised faithfulness to one another and each affixed their respective seal.

Fourth, if the sacrament had been transformed into a mutual covenant by the New England Puritans it had lost, according to Nevin, its primary symbolic referent. The invisible grace the sacrament properly communicated was the partaking of the believer in the divine life of Christ. As he had argued in the opening chapter, the sacrament was the natural correlate to the doctrine of salvation through union with Christ. The Christian receives salvation as she is mystically and actually placed in Christ and he in her. For Nevin, “the power of this fact is mysteriously concentrated in the Holy Supper.” Salvation for the modern Puritan had been made to stand on the apprehension of Christian doctrine and the partaking of the substantial life of Christ was wholly absent.

Last, Nevin accused American Puritans of having de-humanized whatever might remain of a participation in the life of Christ. Calvin had especially emphasized that the true flesh and blood of the Son of man “vivified” the very bones of the communicant and denied that that what was enjoyed by the Christian was merely the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit. But the Puritans argued that the terms “flesh” and “blood” were employed to direct the mind to the sufferings of Christ.

2007-03-27T17:09:00.000-04:00

Theodore Appel wrote of Nevin's chapel preaching, "it was in fact difficult for many of us to follow him in his severe logical reasonings, or to resist a temptation to drowsiness before he came to his application." Recollections of College Life, at Marshall College, Mercersburg, Pa, from 1839 to 1845 (Reading, PA: 1886) 298.

2007-03-24T17:40:00.000-04:00

Unfair Book Review:

Theodore Appel, The Life and Work of John Williamson Nevin, (Lancaster, PA: 1889).

Still the most thorough biography of Nevin ever written. This is not a critical biography. It's strength is in the sheer amount of primary sources Appel incorporates. In fact, the majority of the material is by Nevin himself. Strangely, Appel edits some interesting parts out of Nevin's 1870 autobiographical articles from the Weekly Messenger.

James Hastings Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961).

Probably the best critical full-length treatment of Nevin yet. Strength is in Nichols's demonstration that he has read everything Nevin ever wrote, including early pre-Mercersburg stuff that show the seeds of his later thought. Nichols doesn't clean things up too much. For example, he makes sure to note that Nevin still goes on anti-papist rants during the first few years at Mercersburg. Unlike others, he has less of apparent agenda. Weaknesses are in the inappropriate title and places where he makes too much of Nevin's Presbyterian idealism; also, it is unfortunate that Nevin has to share the book with Schaff but this has advantages too.

Richard E. Wentz. John Williamson Nevin: American Theologian (New York: Oxford University, 1991).

The least helpful of all Nevin biographies is this one. Wentz states that he is going to give a "postmodern" treatment of Nevin. It seems that what he means by postmodern is a poorly written interaction with a few of Nevin's ideas that provides very little in the way of a complete portrait. Hart might be forgiven for making Nevin into a confessional traditionalist if only for Wentz's even less likely claims that Nevin is a postmodern would-be universalist UCC theologian before his time.

D. G. Hart, John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006).

Hart's biography is also a good introduction to Nevin but in many ways his agenda mis-represents what I think is the true picture of Nevin. Strengths: it is very readable and Hart's agenda is more palatable than Wentz's. Weaknesses: Hart conflates Nevin's Confessionalist writings from the early years at Mercersburg with his later work betraying that he either didn't read or ignored Nevin's harshest criticisms of Presbyterianism and Westminster Calvinism. Wentz is wrong to see Nevin as a non-confessional theologian in the way he construes it. But Nevin can't be seen as an early apologist for Hart's strange brand of OPC traditionalism.

2007-03-24T17:32:00.000-04:00

In 1962 Karl Barth took a speaking tour of the U.S. lecturing on the subject of his book Evangelical Theology. Those lectures were recorded and released in a 7 LP set by Word which has now been digitized and remastered by Wipf and Stock. I want to hear these but won't pay $60.00 for them. I'll have to wait until they show up on www.lala.com or used at Amazon.

2007-03-18T02:07:00.000-04:00

Predestinarianism vs. The Sacraments

“This general [ambivalent] posture of the [German Reformed] Church, with reference to the doctrine of the divine decrees, serves to explain how it retained its churchly character and its reverence for the Creed, its faith in the Sacraments, and other churchly elements. The remark is no doubt true, that there are two elements in Calvin’s theology, which it is difficult to reconcile so as to place them in their proper relation to each other,--his doctrine of the decrees, and his high views of the Church and the sacraments. Though both were upheld by him with equal fidelity, the former among some of his followers, soon claimed altogether too much attention in theological discussion; whilst the latter, the questions connected with the sacraments, which were the life of the Protestant Church in the beginning, no longer gave character and tone to theology. It was a logical and necessary result of the undue stress placed on the doctrine of predestination, especially when carried out rigorously to all its supposed consequences.” --Theodore G. Appel, “The Genius and Mission of the German Reformed Church,” Tercentenary Monument: In Commemoration of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism, (Chambersburg, PA: 1863) 328.

Theodore Appel, Nevin's first biographer, and sometime editor of the Mercersburg Quarterly Review weighs in on the difference between the Continental Reformed and the the Puritans. It's obvious even in this short excerpt that he is reading the Mercersburg theology back into history to some extent. Nevin and Schaff were more innovative than Appel ever lets on or perhaps realized. But on the whole, Appel is not the first to try to make something of the difference between these two branches of the Reformed family tree. He traces the split back to conflicting strains of Calvin's thought which Calvin himself was able to hold together but which his followers did not. Not a bad hypothesis although it goes against the whole thesis of Richard Muller. More on this to come.

2007-03-17T17:48:00.000-04:00

“If this ben’t the work of God, I have all my religion to learn over again, and know not what use to make of the Bible." --Edwards defending the revivals at North Hampton to a detractor.

(The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online is now available for use in a Public Beta phase.)

2007-03-14T22:47:00.000-04:00

I want to draw attention to a valuable resource for anyone interested in the Mercersburg theology. I have placed links in the column to the left to five volumes of the Mercersburg Review that are hosted by Google Books. They are not sequential but there is plenty to whet the appetite and then some.

Just in case anyone is wondering, the reason so many recent posts have had to do with John Williamson Nevin or the Mercersburg theology is that he is the subject of my Sr. thesis at U.T.S. which is now due in less than a month. Yikes. I'm well on my way but a little overwhelmed.

A professor of mine from college who has become a friend has said to me more than once, "be careful what you read, you become what you read." I'm not so sure he's right. A little simplistic. But I get the point.

I have always had a difficult time choosing an area to devote my reading interests. My bookshelves are testimony to various phases of my reading devotion from early CBD spending sprees on J.I. Packer-esque books, to biblical studies, to Reformed theology, contemporary theology and philosophy, ancient Church history, Reformation history, and American Church history. I think that sums it up. Wide, but not deep. The nice thing about studying John W. Nevin and Mercersburg is that here more than one of these interests coalesce. All in one I get historical studies and historiography, Calvin (albeit not immediately), systematic and Reformed theology, American church history and patristics. I could easily devote my reading life to that! The only area I would have to really play catch-up in would be 18th and 19th century German theology. No small task, especially if I took it seriously and tried to learn German. No thanks.

2007-03-07T16:30:00.000-05:00

Nevin on Faith Preceding Christian Knowledge
"The entire Creed has to do with realities that hold in a world above nature, (though not abstractly disjoined from it,) and that can be apprehended, accordingly, as they are, only by faith."

In many ways the most significant aspect of Nevin's argument in his articles on the Apostles' Creed is his apology for a faith that precedes knowledge. Nevin writes extensively on the nature of faith as an immediate mode of knowing that apprehends the presence of Jesus the Christ. St. Peter's confession that Jesus is the "Christ, the Son of the living God" along with Jesus' response that this truth was not the result of flesh and blood deduction is paradigmatic for Christians. The Creed is only rightly appreciated when it is not approached as a compilation of assorted historical and theological assertions. Thus one might give assent to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected on the third day. But this is not the confession of the Creed unless it is preceded by a real and awful faith in the Incarnate God, Christ Jesus. He states, "the fact of the resurrection witnessed by sense, that is a mere phenomenon in the world of nature, would not be its truth as asserted in the Creed." This is how Nevin can state that the Creed is a witness to the supernatural world of new creation inaccessible to mere rational apprehension.

Further, because entrance to this world of the Creed is not gained by ratiocination the Creed is not subject to scientific dissection. It is not that sort of animal. Again, "thus it is that all the points of this historical confession, however some of them might seem to be accessible to our knowledge...in the true force and spirit of the Creed, are to be taken as supernatural truths, which can be rightly apprehended and uttered only by faith in full communication throughout with the grand primary fact [the fact of the Incarnation] to which they belong and from which they spring."

I find this element of Nevin's theology under-emphasized in secondary literature covering Mercersburg. E. Brooks Holifield notes in his history the centrality of establishing a reasonable religion as a running theme in the American story. Nevin criticizes this general disposition as did several other 19th century dissenters, few of whom were able to hold on to a traditional catholic faith as he did.

Also interesting to me, the critique of American Protestantism's evidentialism was taken up again by a less sacramental and non-Anglo theologian in the 20th century who ended up parodying Nevin by leaving his Dutch roots for the newly founded Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Cornelius Van Til has made a mess of things for conservative American Presbyterians who have read him ever since, not quite fitting the mold of Evangelicalism in the U.S. Van Til began his Systematic Theology with a criticism of Hodge and Warfield's method. They had failed to recognize the noetic effects of sin, the presuppositional nature of all knowledge and had allowed Enlightenment assumptions about the nature of truth to make inroads upon their theology via their employment of baconian method and Common Sense Realism.

2007-03-06T21:02:00.000-05:00

Nevin on the Incarnation and the Christian Faith

"...the stupendous fact of the incarnation, resolves itself into a series or chain of events, a living historical process rather, by which the mystery enters more intimately and deeply always into the drama of the world’s life; till finally it becomes complete, and is found to have its perfect work, when “Jesus was glorified,” and the windows of heaven were opened thus, (John vii. 39,) for the power of his Spirit to descend in full measure upon the earth."

2007-03-06T19:01:00.000-05:00

John Williamson Nevin claimed that the Mercersburg theology was a theology of the incarnation and should be characterized as radically christocentric. This claim is supported by his third installment on the Apostles' Creed. There he again iterates that the Creed is the organic and necessary utterance of Christian faith. He continually refers to Peter's great confession as illustrative of the spirit that lies behind the Christian's recitation of the Creed. It is the historical fact of the incarnation that gives birth to the Creed because the Christian, like Peter, encounters Christ and then confesses her faith in a creed. Why, then, does the Creed begin with "God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth"? Nevin argues that this is not to assume that the Christian starts with the God revealed in nature and then works her way to Jesus (as a scientist gathering data). He notes that this creator is the source of the new creation in Christ and makes much of the fact that it is God "the Father." The God who made heaven and earth is not our father unless the Son takes on what the Father made and we are adopted into their relationship. So, from the first line the Creed assumes a living union with Christ the Son is in effect. We do not have God as our Father until we have Christ as our brother and this we have in the incarnation.

2007-03-03T21:29:00.000-05:00

Interestingly, Holifield states on the basis of Nevin's articles on the Apostles' Creed that Nevin is even less a biblicist than Schaff. This is a reversal of my immediate and general impressions of the two Mercersburg men. Schaff, he says, conceives of tradition as normative insofar as it expresses the legitimate Christian consciousness found in Scripture. Ecclesiastical history is the history of the explication and expression of the true sense and life of Scripture. It is a history of interpretation. Thus the tradition is still held accountable to the Scriptures. If I am reading Holifield correctly, Schaff only criticizes so-called 'Puritanism' in not understanding that the tradition is the "Bible as apprehended by the Church." Perhaps Schaff would say that they were too hasty in assuming disjuncture between the two. Nevin would go on to insist that Christ's life, and not the Bible is the principle of the Christian faith.

2007-03-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

There seem to be surprisingly few good surveys of the American Church story. I recently came across E. Brooks Holifield's Theology in America. I'm looking forward to getting further into it. Holifield excels in realizing the great interest Americans had in thinking theologically before the 20th century and is unashamedly thus a history of theological ideas while not ignoring wider cultural developments.

2007-02-27T21:17:00.000-05:00

Philip Schaff on Mary in the Church from 100-311 A.D.

Schaff notes, against Protestant revisionism, that there is evidence that Mary was at least revered by Christians before the Council of Ephesus in 431. Mary is depicted in the catacomb of Priscilla which dates at least as early as the beginning of the third century. He grants that "no Ora pro nobis, no Ave Maria, no Theotokos or Deipara" show up in the first three centuries. But this is at least enough to challenge Protestantism for the ancient images do what all proper modern images of Mary do well, namely, "endeavor to set forth that peculiar union of virgin purity and motherly tenderness which distinguish 'the Wedded Maid and Virgin Mother' from ordinary women, and exert such a powerful charm upon the imagination and feelings of Christendom. No excess of Mariolatry, sinful as they are, should blind us to the restraining and elavating effect of contemplating, with devout reverence,

'The ideal of all womanhood,
So mild , so merciful, so strong, so good,
So patient, paceful, loyal, loving, pure.'"

2007-02-27T20:22:00.000-05:00

Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity has the same effect on my conception of Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century that Timothy Hall's Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World had on my understanding of Evangelicals in the eighteenth century. When I read Hall's book as a Senior in college I began to see the novel elements of Whitfield's program and it made me wonder how I would have felt to be a typical, maybe boring, parish preacher and to have a Log College man roll into town, interview me and pronounce to the townspeople that I had not, in fact, experienced the new birth and that if they wanted to hear the gospel from a duly converted minister he would be happy to oblige them in my pulpit later that day.

Evangelicalism was nothing short of radicalism. In the eighteenth century it was eclessiologically radical as itenerants violated long respected parish bounds and were at least theologically inovative. Hatch, describing the character of Methodist, Baptist and schismatic ministers in nineteenth century America states that they were, "young men of relentless energy who went about movement-building as self-conscious outsiders. They shared an ethic of unrelenting toil, a passion for expansion, a hostility to orthodox belief and style, a zeal for religious reconstruction, and a systematic plan to realize their ideals. However diverse their theologies and church organizations, they all offered common people, especially the poor, compelling visions of individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Like the Populist movement at the end of the nineteenth century, these movements took shape around magnetic leaders who were highly skilled in communication and group mobilization."

Hatch criticizes modern American historians for their too-hasty identification of twentieth century Evangelicalism with the Evangelicals in the early days of the republic. I wonder if Evangelicals today can accept this reading of their genealogy, as not "a conservative force," but "egalitarianism powerfully at work in the new nation."

2007-02-27T14:29:00.000-05:00

In The Democratization of American Christianity Nathan O. Hatch tells the story of an explosion of democratic popularism in nineteenth century America. In the introductory chapter he provides evidence supporting his reading. One such fun fact he includes: In 1845 the upstart denomination, the Antimission Baptists, counted more ministers than either the Roman Catholic priests or Lutheran pastors in the new republic.

2007-02-23T19:22:00.000-05:00

John Williamson Nevin’s understanding of the nature of the Apostle’s Creed comes into view when he states that its nature “involves no reflection.” (It is interesting, as an aside, that here he is able to answer the problem faced by theologians on the nature of theology itself as it stands in relation to the theology of a ‘naïve’ Christian.)

After numerous pages leading to it, he finally states “this is Christianity, that a man should stand in Christ, in the new world which Christ creates, and say… ‘Behold these heavens and this earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness and everlasting salvation. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord; &c.’ The Creed affirms all this as a glorious reality, present not to sense, but to faith. It offers no problem, no hypothesis, no argument; but simply plants itself in the midst of the new order of things which is revealed in Christ, and proclaims its fundamental character and outline, with the force of an assurance that is felt to be identical with that of life itself…Its object is, not to lodge its articles as so many points of Christian orthodoxy in the mind; but so to bring this rather into the very consciousness of what they affirm, that they may be appropriated by it, and made one with it, as a part of its own life.”

2007-02-23T12:25:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought that the Byzantine Catholic Church in Slovakia would be on the mp3 hype-tip? Not me, but I am sure glad that they are. (The recording quality of the Chrysostomos choir is better than that of the first choir which has some annoying noises in it at times.)

2007-02-22T08:18:00.000-05:00

Again, on the nature of faith's relationship to revelation, Nevin writes, "Christianity in this way is just as much a living reality, as Christ himself; and being like him above nature, the revelation of God in the world, its presence can be apprehended primarily in the living form of faith."

2007-02-21T20:58:00.000-05:00

John Williamson Nevin makes the significant albeit obvious observation that the fact that faith, as opposed to mere rational assent, is what corresponds to Christian revelation, tells us something about the nature of its object. That is, if the Christian revelation were the bare fact, say, that Jesus Christ is Lord, such a fact might be arrived at via ratiocination and revelation would be too strong a word to use. But the fact that the Christian revelation requires faith fits with the nature of what is revealed,--not the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord (though it does do this secondarily), but the living Lord Jesus Christ himself. He states, "the revelation was in the person of Christ himself, not an outward fact for sense, but the presence of a divine life for faith." And further, "christianity, [sic.] it deserves to be well laid to heart, is in a deep sense identical with the life of Christ itself. It is not the words he spoke, nor the works he wrought, as something sundered from his own person, but the living fountain of all these as introduced into the world in the mystery from which his person springs."

2007-02-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

The 81st Psalm is concerned with the law of God and Israel's obedience to it, especially to the first commandment. In 81:8-10 the language of the first commandment is peppered throughout so that 81:9 reads "There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not worship a foreign god" followed by the familiar preamble from Exodus 20:2, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt." What follows this citation however is not a direct echo of any commandment, rather, the God of Exodus 20:2 brought them out of Egypt "and said, 'open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." Again, obeying God's commands is compared to feeding "on the finest of wheat" and being satisfied "with honey from the rock" in the final line of the Psalm. The rebellion of Israel is a refusal to feast.

2007-02-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

...Puritanism, in this view, is at war at once with the Fathers and with the Reformers, with early Christianity and with the Christianity of the sixteenth century. However it may agree with them in many points of doctrine, abstractly stated, its apprehension of Christianity as a whole, the organism of its faith, the standpoint of its religious contemplation, and so, of course, the relations and bearings under which it sees all particular truths, come before us with a quite different character. Puritanism is not original Protestantism. It is an advance on this; a real breaking away from its first life; Protestantism, we may say, self-stimulated into a sort of “second growth.”--J. W. Nevin, "Puritanism and the Creed," Mercersburg Review (Nov. 1849) 595.

(goes a little way in explaining why some pastors can't seem to understand other pastors in my denomination)

2007-02-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

Conference Alert:

two fantastic conferences are being held in the new york area this summer, both of which i plan on attending. if anyone else wants to join me drop me an email.

Fordham University hosts Orthodox Readings of Augustine June 14-16. Speakers include Andrew Louth, David Hart, Jean-Luc Marion, John Milbank, my own professor of Patristics, Fr. John A. McGuckin and several others.

Princeton Seminary's Center for Barth Studies hosts its annual conference June 24-27. This year the theme is "Karl Barth and American Evangelicals: Friends or Foes. Speakers include Bruce McCormack, D.G. Hart, George Hunsinger, Michael Horton and others. If you are a student, registration is a meager $25.00! Sign up quick.

2007-02-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

i have to apologize to several who have commented on this blog who have most likely long given up on getting a response from me. i only realized that there were a dozen comments waiting my approval for publishing, some nearly six months old, tonight. chalk it up to my lack of tech-savvy...or self-absorption. sincere apologies, especially to those who left comments worthy of response.

2006-12-16T15:24:00.000-05:00

in his book the age of reform, 1250-1550: an intellectual and religious history of late medieval and reformation europe, steven ozment includes a bit of refomer gossip that i'd never come across before. ulrich zwingli almost didn't get the post at zurich because of his history of sexual relations with a girl while at his first parish in glarus. his response was that she was the one who had seduced him, she was not, as his opponents claimed, a respectable virgin, and that unlike the other candidate for the post, he had no children or concubines.

2006-11-07T14:59:00.000-05:00

calvin's institutes IV:1 is one of the best things i have ever read outside holy scripture.

2006-11-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

Chap. IV.

Five Years at Princeton

I look back upon my days spent at Princeton as, in some respects, the most pleasant part of my life. My entrance into the Theological Seminary brought with it, of itself, a certain feeling of repose by putting an end to much had been painfully indeterminate before, in regard to my life, and by offering me the prospect of a quiet harbor for three years at least (should I live that long), from further outside cares and fears; while I was met here, at the same time, with all the opportunities and helps I needed for prosecuting with energy now the new work in which I had embarked. I was in no hurry, as many seemed to be, to get through the Seminary. Looking beyond it, was for me, only looking into the dark. I cared not how long I might rest in it as my home. So I gave myself up with steady, quiet industry to its engagements and pursuits; and I did so, by general acknowledgement, with the best success. The institution itself was at the time, I may say, in the height of its prosperity and reputation. Dr. Miller and Dr. Alexander were in the full vigor of their spiritual powers—the two men best qualified on the whole Presbyterian Church, unquestionably, for the high position in which they were here placed; while Professor Hodge,, still young and only recently invested with the distinction of being their colleague, gave ample promise also, even then, of what he has since become, for the Christian world. It was a privilege to sit at the feet of these excellent men,, So I felt to be at the time; and so I have never ceased to regard it as having been, through all years since. On the best terms with my revered instructors, in most pleasant relations throughout with my fellow students, in the midst of an old academical retreat where the very air seemed redolent of literature and science, with no necessity and no wish to press for the time beyond it—is it any wonder that I came to look on Princeton as a second home, or that memory should still turn back to what it then was for my spirit, as an abode only of pleasantness and peace?

The pleasantness and peace, however, were, of course, only relative, not absolute or full. Where is it otherwise with our pilgrimage through this valley of tears? The trials I brought with me to the Seminary, were not left behind on my entering its halls. My physical ailments showed promise of improvement, but I was still in poor health. This took, finally, the form of a settled affection of the liver; a heavy burden at first, which, in the course of years, however, grew gradually more tolerable; although there has not been a day of my life since, in which I have not felt more or less pain from it, down to the present time. But neither were my spiritual difficulties ended by any means. Embarrassments, fears and doubts, with regard to my personal religion, attended me, more or less, all the time; and the question of my call hung with me always in painful suspense, making it very uncertain whether I should ever be able to enter it at all. There was much in the institution to promote earnest concern of this sort. Dr. Alexander’s searching and awakening casuistry, especially in our Sunday afternoon conferences, were of a character not easy to be forgotten. It was by no means uncommon for students to go away from these meetings, in a state of spiritual discouragement bordering on despair. And these, of course, were generally of the more serious and earnest class. Others were not so easily disturbed. Occasionally there might be a formal giving up of old “hopes” altogether, and a re-conversion to new ones. I had my own share of experiences, which it is not necessary here to repeat; at times exceedingly solemn and deep; often with strong crying and tears; going in the way of soul-crisis, quite beyond the crisis of what was called my conversion at Union College; and yet, I must say, never coming up fully after all to my own anxious ideal of what the new birth ought to be.

There were in fact two different theories or schemes of piety at work in my mind which refused to coalesce. One was the New-England Puritanic theory, as it had taken possession particularly of the revival system, which was now assuming to be the only true sense of Gospel all over the country; the other was the old proper Presbyterian theory of the seventeenth century, which was also, the general Non-conformist theory of that time, as we have it represented by Baxter, Owen, Howe, and other like religious teachers of the same age. There was, for me, a difference between the two systems, which I could feel without being able to explain. The old system was not, by any means, all that the true idea of the Church required; but it stood much nearer to this than the new one, whose great characteristic it is, as we know, to be on principle unchurchly and unsacramental altogether. My own religious life, as already shown, started in the bosom of the old Reformed order. It belonged to the Presbyterianism of the Westminster Assembly. I had with this, moreover, a sort of constitutional affinity, which would never allow me to feel altogether at home in the other more modern system. I may add, too, that our teaching at Princeton had much in it, that went against the new here, and in favor of the old. Dr. Miller was strong on certain ecclesiastical points especially, that would not square at all with the new way of thinking; while Dr. Alexander was always recommending the divinity and piety of the seventeenth century, as it was easy to see also, that they formed the element in which mainly his own piety lived, moved, and had its being. But, with all this, the other unchurchly scheme exercised over me a strong practical force, which I was not able to withstand. Our teaching was not steadily and consistently in one direction. I had, besides, already taken something of a wrong set in the wrong way. This was the case also, with the students generally. But few of them cared much for the divinity of the Reformed Church in the seventeenth century, whether in Helvetin, Holland, France, or Great Britain. The tide of actual living throughout around us lay all now another way; and all of us, whether we would have it so or not, fell inwardly and experimentally, more or less, under captivity to its power.

So it was that I found myself in a sort of strait between these two systems, and knew not how to adjust the one rightly with the other in my religious life. The difficulty was a seriously practical one, and it attended me all through my Princeton yeas; although my mind, toward the end, began to take in regard to it, more and more, the bent which came to prevail with me fully at a later time.

Among the different departments of study in the Seminary, that of Oriental and Biblical Literature, which was then in the hands of Dr. Hodge, engaged at once a large share of my attention. The way in which this took place, rather against my own will than with it, was somewhat curious. I had provided myself, at some cost, with the necessary text-books for the study of Hebrew, and had got just far enough in the Grammar to find it a wilderness of apparent difficulties, when the unwelcome discovery stared me in the face, that all the course came to, with the students commonly, was a smattering knowledge only of some few chapters of the Bible, pretty sure to be forgotten again through negligence in later life. My spirit sank within me at the thought of so dry a task ending in such a poor and barren result, and I came to the conclusion to give up the study. Happily, however, I had a wise and faithful advisor, in my friend, Matthew L. Fullerton, who was then in the Senior class of the Seminary, and who had taken me to room with him as his chum. He would not hear of my dropping Hebrew. How could I know, he said, what use I might have for it hereafter in the service of the church. In vain I plead my distaste for it, my want of firm health, and my own full persuasion that if I ever entered the ministry at all, it would be in some out of the way country congregation, where Hebrew would be of no sort of use to me whatever. He only laughed at my talk, and put it the more earnestly on my conscience to do what he held to be plainly present duty in the case, leaving consequences and results with God. In this way he prevailed. I took up again my half-discarded Grammar, and determined, cost what it might, to make myself master of the new situation. This meant for me now, however, much more than gaining a mere introduction to the Hebrew language. I must make it my own so as to have it in sure use, and to be in no danger of losing it again. So to work with it I went in good full earnest; and to my great comfort, in a short time, the lion which was in the way disappeared altogether. I soon pushed ahead of the class in the exercise of reading; and by the time they got through three or four chapters, I was at the end of Genesis. Then I laid down my plan to tax myself with a new lesson privately every day. The task became soon a pleasure; and in this way, before the close of my course, I made out to finish the entire Bible. I had a right then to be considered in fact, the best Hebrew scholar in the Institution.

I have been the more particular to notice the unforeseen and seemingly casual turn which was given, in this way, to my theological studies at the beginning, because it exercised, in fact, a determining influence on my whole Seminary course, and through that, as we shall see, on all my subsequent life. It led to my devoting myself, more than I might otherwise have done, to biblical and exegetical learning generally. This opened the way for my temporary employment as a teacher at Princeton; and that service again drew after it immediately my call to the Western Theological Seminary of Pittsburgh. So God leadeth the blind providentially in paths that they have no known, making darkness light before them and crooked things straight.

To myself, so far as the future of my life was concerned, all beyond my regular course in the Seminary was, while it lasted, painfully dark. I looked forward with fear to the close of this course. It seemed only to be coming too fast; and in the end I found myself so shut up with regard to entering the ministry, that I began to cast about seriously for at least a present outlet from the difficulty in some other employment. The idea was to take a classical school.

My communications to my friends on the subject, were gloomy and full of distress; and I do not know that I can in any way represent the general condition, in which my mind was (a most material part, as all may easily see, of my inward biography), so well as by quoting a couple of passages from two different letters of my most worthy and excellent father, called forth by the occasion of these doleful self-bewailings.

“I should be sorry, my dear son,” he writes in 1825, “should I live to see you mount the sacred desk, induced by any other motive than the love of Christ and the salvation of souls. But I should be sorry, that you should be deterred from preaching the Gospel, by aiming at such an abstraction from worldly things as is seldom attainable, and by no means desirable; because were such an indifference to the things of this world universally to obtain, it would very soon come to an end. We find our great Guide and Master, in going about doing good, mixing and conversing with all kinds of mankind, present at a wedding, directing the fishermen, and supplying food and wine even by miracle. The accounts which we read of the lives and experience of pious are to be received with caution. ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’ Of those, with whose originals I was acquainted, the writer, even when he comes nearest the truth, imitates the painter, who gives a prominent appearance to beauty and elegance, but throws defect and deformity into the shade. I believe that there are as pious men now living as Edwards, Doddridge, and those others you mention. But there is still remaining in the world a little of that ‘pious fraud,’ as it is usually termed, which, in those memoirs of good men, whether auto-biographical or otherwise, thinks it better for the interests of our religion to conceal those blemishes which are inseparable from our nature, and present a faultless character for the imitation of posterity. But they err in this. Their design may be good; but the effect is the reverse. They teach us to expect what never yet happened. So did not Paul. And why, my son, stagger at what is written of those men, when the pupil of Gamaliel presents himself to you in far other guise? He wrote not as Baxter or Watts. He held the pen of inspiration. He conceals neither his faults nor his fears. His letter to Timothy is by far more valuable than all that has been published on that subject since. But, blessed be God, still we may ascend in our inquiry after truth, and drink at the fountain head. Remember that our Lord and Master Himself catechized Peter, as to his fitness to take upon him the pastoral office. The examination was plain, short, and simple, easy to be understood, and at once reaches the heart. If I stood thus, it would be enough for me to boldly set out on my embassy—if otherwise qualified as to human learning and talents for a teacher—regardless of all the experience that has since been left on record—‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?’ On his answering in the affirmative, He immediately set him apart for the sacred office: ‘Feed my lambs.’”

Again in 1826: “The Presbytery will be organized in Carlisle next month. I do not understand your last letter, whether you intend to place yourself under its care now or not. You are clearly enough understood to say, that you would not preach the Gospel now if admitted; and from your allusions to ‘disappointing expectations,’ and ‘being urged into the ministry,’ I must conclude that you are still doubtful whether ever you shall enter the sacred desk as a teacher. On one point let us distinctly understand one another. I thought that I never pointed out a profession to you—I had determined never to do so to any of my sons. ’Tis true, I rejoiced when you yourself looked Zionward, and proposed to enlist under the banner and become a soldier of Jesus Christ. I gave you cheerfully to Him, with thanks, and with prayers, that even you might be accepted and made useful and wise to win souls. But far be it from me, even a this stage of preparation, to urge you into the ministry. Unless you feel that you can take upon you that sacred office, with your whole heart and soul devoted to your Master’s cause, and resolved, through his grace, never to look back, having put your hand to the plough, you had better stop where you are. However I might have desired that you should preach the Gospel, believe me, my son, I would much rather you would never enter the pulpit, than that you should do so with doubt or hesitancy—or, I will add, incapacity. You would do no good.” Then, discouraging my idea of taking a Grammar School, he says, among other things: “You have already been too long immured in schools and seminaries for the good of your bodily health; and it may be that the health of your mind would also receive benefit by your separating yourself from lectures and recitations. It is time for you to see the world as it is, and know your fellow creatures as they are. There is danger of your forming erroneous opinions of men and things; of your conceiving and brooding over ideas of duty and conduct altogether utopian and visionary—not to be realized.”

As may be seen from this correspondence, my way was strangely hid and hedged in, so as to be without light beyond that of all others in my class. And so it ran on quite to the end; when, in view of leaving the Seminary, I had already entered into communication with the late Dr. Hewitt, of Harrisburg, with regard to opening a Grammar School in that place; seeing in the profession of teaching, after all, what was for me, in my existing state of mind, the only allowable alternative to entering at once into the ministry. Then all at once the high, black wall before me gave way; and light fell upon my path, as unexpectedly as if it had been opened before me from heaven itself. It had been arranged, that Dr. Hodge, for the benefit of the institution, should make a two years’ visit to Europe; and so now, within a few days only of the close of our term, and without the least hint of any such thing having reached me before, he tendered me in form the privilege and honor of filling his place, as assistant teacher in the Seminary, during the time of his absence. The salary was small; only two hundred dollars a year; not quite enough to live on, even in those cheap days. But I made no account of that. The offer cam e to me as an enlargement when I was in distress. It seemed the Lord’s doing, and was marvelous in my eyes; leaving no room for any doubt with regard to my duty. And so I closed with it at once.

Thus my three years at Princeton were lengthened into five; and my existence became, in this way, entwined with the place as a settled residence still more than before. My studies also, went on more effectually than ever, being aided now by the work of teaching others. For there is nothing like this, in the end, as a discipline of learning for ourselves. To learn and to teach are, in a certain sense, reciprocal needs and mutually complemental powers. They go hand in hand together.

In this period I wrote my Biblical Antiquities, in compliance with an urgent request, which I felt I had no right to refuse. In the hands of the American Sunday School Union, the book came afterwards into very wide circulation, and continues in general popular use to the present day. It cost me a heavy amount of work, for which I was poorly paid.

My Princeton life ended with the return of Dr. Hodge from Europe in 1828. Before that, however, I had been fixed upon as the proper person for the chair of Biblical Literature in the new Theological Seminary, which the General Assembly was now taking steps to establish in the West. In the meantime, having previously placed myself under the care of the Carlisle Presbytery, I appeared before that body at a special meeting held October 2, 1828, in the city of Philadelphia, and after satisfactory trial, was there licensed to preach the Gospel; to which work then afterwards I devoted myself actively, in a more or less itinerant way, for more than a whole year. J.W.N.

2006-11-04T14:38:00.000-05:00

[edit: what follows is nothing more than an an argument that is going on in my own head. i am also disatisfied with the "reformed" incubator at times. how to move forward from the anti-church evangelicalism of my youth is the goal for me as it seems many of the reformed bloggers i sometimes read. it is only that i come face to face with another form of anti-church thinking everyday at uts that keeps me going in circles.]

i find it interesting that there is in the catholicising movement in reformed circles a liberalizing tendency as well. that is, a tendency in the name of ecumenism to downplay creedal orthodoxy. maybe this is my own misconception of what a true creed is. for me, and for conservative presbyterians the Westminster standards are normative. certainly there are nuances that are required by such a statement. for Presbyterians the qualification comes from the Confession of Faith itself, namely that Scripture is what some have called a 'norming norm.' what i have in mind here are those reformed folks who are disatisfied with Westminster Presbyterianism (who rarely, it seems take the time to flesh out their qualms in detail, perhaps for fear of voicing the damning obvious) and rail against the 'TRs' (truly reformed) for their stubborness in favor of a more catholic form of worship or theology. this spirit is all over the blogging world and it doesn't seem fair to me. maybe i am just not postmodern or emergent enough. i wholeheartedly desire catholic unity, belieive in the holy catholic church, and recognize that there are areas where our Confession might be inadequate. there are certianly problems in the evangelical strand of my own denomination. but a bare plea for tolerance is a terrible way to address these supposed problems. further, the uncritical infatuation with other less emphatically Reformed theological and liturgical traditions (please shoot me in the head if i start overusing that word) and constant depreciating of Westminster orthodoxy without bothering to criticize substantially sounds so much like the liberal swill i hear at UTS that i am hesitant to get on board.

2006-10-29T13:54:00.000-05:00

Chap. III.

Between Schenectady and Princeton

There is a fashion with diseases: according to which a complaint, not properly epidemic, is found at certain times putting on its worst character and prevailing more widely than common. This was the case with my dyspepsia at the time I came under its power, on my return home from college. It was something more serious a good deal, than what goes by that name commonly now, and in this form appeared then in the character a new disease, which fell as a scourge on sedentary people, particularly of the younger class. Some knowledge of its symptoms and effects—physical, mental, and moral—may be got from the Ninth Lecture of Professor Hitchcock’s work, Dyspepsia Forestalled and Resisted, published in 1831, but the fruit, he tells us, of a personal conflict with the enemy reaching through the twenty years before.

I had the complaint in its worst character; and it hung on to me with a sort of death-like grasp, which for a time seemed to mock all hope of recovery or relief. I experienced all sorts of painful and unpleasant symptoms; was continually miserable and weak; had an intense consciousness all the time of the morbid workings of my physical system; lived in a perpetual casuistry of didactic rules and questions; and ran through all imaginable helps and cures, only to find, that in my case at least, they signified nothing. At the same time, of course, the disease lay as a cloud upon my mind, entered as a secret poison into all my feelings, and undermined the proper strength and energy of my will. Emphatically might it be called, in every view, a thorn in the flesh, and a very messenger of Satan sent to buffet me with sore and heavy blows.

And the strength of Christ, it must be sorrowfully confessed, was not made perfect in my weakness; for there was no proper room offered it to become so, in the reigning character of my religious life, as it stood at this time. As I have said before, this also was of a most sickly dyspeptic habit, and I was but poorly qualified, therefore, to show the power of grace over against the weakness of nature. No doubt my physical condition had itself much to do with the morbid character of my religion; since where the whole nervous system has come to be thus disordered and deranged, it is not possible that the higher life of the soul, in any case, should not also be involved, more or less seriously, in the general wreck. But apart from this my piety in its own nature was not of the sort required for such an emergency, as that by which it was now tried as with fire. It was of the sort rather to aggravate and increase the trial; for, as I have already said, it was intensely subjective and introspective. Instead of looking to the outward redeeming facts and powers of Christianity, it was too much a habit of looking into its own constitution, as if to be satisfied with this first of all, were the only way to true religious satisfaction in any other form. And as all was sure to be found largely unsatisfactory here, what could the result of such painful autopsy be (this everlasting studying of symptoms, this perpetual feeling of the spiritual pulse), other than the weakening of faith, the darkening of hope, and the soaring of that most excellent grace of charity itself, which is the very bond of perfectness and of all virtues—in one word, a hopelessly valetudinarian state of the soul, answering in all respects to the broken down condition of its outward tenement, the body.

This was the order of piety I brought home with me from college. It was not after the pattern which had been first set before me in Middle-Spring. But Middle-Spring itself, and the Presbyterian churches of the Valley generally, were no longer true to their old position. The change, of which I have spoken before, had already begun to make itself felt. The catechetical system was passing away. What had once been the living power of the old style of religion was, in fact, dying out; and the notion of a new sort of religious life, heard of from other parts of the country, or exemplified irregularly among outside sects, was silently at work in the minds of many; causing it to be felt, more or less, that the modes of thought and worship, handed down from the fathers, had become a good deal prosy and formal, and needed at least to have infused in them a more modern spirit. There was a slow process of Puritanization going forward throughout the Presbytery of Carlisle; a movement in which Carlisle itself, under the vigorous auspices of Dr. George Duffield, took the lead; while this was still met in different quarters, with no small amount of both theoretical and practical resistance, which gave the character of a continuous drawing in the opposite directions, such as all could feel, however hard it might be to make it plain in words.

All this only helped, of course, to promote the confusion which was already at work in my own religious experience. I was, in some measure, divided between the conservative and the would-be progressive tendencies; having a sort of constitutional, inborn regard for the true underlying sense of the first, but being drawn also, toward the second, by emotional sensibilities which were not to be repressed. I held on outwardly to the regularities of the old Presbyterian life, as they were still in good measure kept up in Middle-Spring; but in thought and feeling went far, at the same time, in justifying different Methodistical modes of piety, as being on the whole, perhaps of more account for the salvation of the world. I was of that awakened younger class in the congregation, who saw for the most part a state of dead formality only in its church services, and found it somewhat difficult to believe, that the older sort of people generally had any religion at all.

So much for my general religious state as far as I can call it to mind, in this darkly remembered, and by no means pleasant interval of my life. It was confused and dark; I might almost say, without form and void; a sort of tumultating chaos, in which conflicting elements and forces vainly sought for reconciliation, and which it was plain only some new power from heaven could ever effectually bring to order and peace. As for theology, my great vademecum and thesaurus, in those days, was Scott’s heavy Commentary on the Old and New Testaments.

And how was it with my general intellectual life? It will be easily understood, that in the circumstances already described it must have fared badly. What mind could prosper under the weight of such double dyspepsia? It did not seem to be much in the way of learning that I had brought away with me from college; but now even this was in danger, apparently, of gliding from my possession, so feeble was the grasp by which it was held. I had no power much of the time, to study at all; and it was a weariness for me often to read for there were with me whole weeks and months, during which the “grasshopper was a burden and desire failed,” by reason of physical prostration. And yet the case was not so bad, I see now in looking back upon it, but that I might have been a great deal worse. I[t] was not, after all, a three years’ hybernation of my intellectual powers; nor was it a retrogression even in their life. On the contrary, my mind, unquestionably, did make some progress in the way of strength and knowledge, however comparatively poor and small. There was discipline in the experience itself, through which I was called to pass; and my outward relations and employments became, in various ways, a profitable school. There were times, too, when I could read, and did read; and I was generally regarded in the community, indeed, as being a sort of recluse (somewhat morose) scholar only, whose health had been destroyed by study, and whom study now also, would not allow to get well.

One branch of such study fell in particularly well with the demand of my health for out-door exercise, the easy and cheerful so-called science of botany; and this, accordingly, I prosecuted, during summers, with great diligence and zeal; scouring the country for miles around, in all directions, on foot or horseback, in search of plants and flowers. Another light exercise I found in improving my knowledge of French. Would that I had put myself, at the same time, to the study of German! But this was to me, then, nothing more than common, useless Dutch: and one of the last things for me to have dreamed of, was what it would become to me in after life. I gave some occasional attention also, in the way of review, to a few of my college studies, brushing up, especially, my knowledge of the Greek, which I was afraid of losing altogether. But all this did not amount to much.

One other important educational advantage deserves to be here mentioned; namely, that which I derived from a debating club, in the ancient borough of Shippensburg, near to which my father, at that time, resided. This it was my privilege to attend regularly through the winter months. It was in its time and way a most honorable literary senate. I know not that any of its members, beside myself, are now living, except my old respected friends, James II. Devor, Esq., (then self-learned blacksmith only, but afterwards successful practitioner of law at the Carlisle bar), now living retired in Perry county, and the Hon. George Sanderson, late Mayor for many years of the city of Lancaster.

My regular business now, however, so far as I could be said to have any business at all, was working on my father’s farm. I was at first, indeed, not able to do much in this way, on account of my general physical weakness. But as time went on, I gained gradually a certain amount of strength, and in the end could put myself to all kinds of agricultural labor. This seemed to be the only chance I had for regaining anything lie tolerable health; but I came more an more to look upon it also, as my only proper avocation for life. For the idea of going on to prepare myself for a learned profession was now pretty effectually crushed out of my mind. I had no heart or spirit for anything of the sort, and was disposed to look upon my existence as a kind of general failure.

But I was not allowed, after all, to rest quietly in this morbid conclusion. With some improvement in my health, while nearing the age of twenty-one, I found myself urged toward a resumption of study, through inward as well as outward pressure, in a way in which it became more and more difficult to withstand. There was, indeed, but one direction in which the force of this constraint made itself felt. If I was to study for any profession, it seemed to be understood all round, that it must be for the sacred ministry. I was considered to have a born determination to that from the beginning. That was looked to in my being sent to college; and neighbors and friends held it to be my proper destination afterwards, pretty much as a matter of course. And then I was shut up to it also, quite as decidedly, in my own mind; so far at least, that I had no power to think seriously of entering any other profession. I could not devote myself to either medicine or law. But just here came my great difficulty. Could I then devote myself with free conscience to divinity? The negative side of the call was clear enough—this profession, or else no profession; but how about the positive side? Was that also clear? Not by any means to my own mind; for my whole religious life, as already shown, was in a fog. This it was that especially caused me to hesitate and pause, when all around me appeared to think I should be going to the Theological Seminary.

The pressure, however, could not be escaped; and so, finally, through no small tribulation of spirit, I was brought to a decision. I would at all events go to Princeton, and study theology; that much, at least, was settled. Whether I should enter the ministry afterwards, or not, was another question. A course of three years in the Seminary might solve the doubt in different ways. One way thought of was that of my own early death; for I was still in the merciless hold of what I felt to be an incurable chronic disease, and had a general imagination that my life, in any case, was to be short. When I went to college, it had been with great misgivings in regard to my boyish scholarship—such was my high ideal at the time of the reigning standard of college education. In proposing to enter the theological Seminary, I had like imaginings now in regard to my piety; which I felt to be of a very poor sort again, over against my similar idealization of the reigning piety of this venerable institution. Princeton divinity students, so far as they had appeared among us yet in Shippensburg or Middle Spring, had a certain air of conscious sanctimony about them, which seemed to be rebuking all the time the common worldliness of these old congregations (especially on Sundays); and gave the notion of a Young Presbyterianism, which was in a fair way to turn into old-fogyism soon all their existing religious life. I was duly impressed with all this, in the case particularly of three or four excellent young men (now in heaven), whom I well remember; and it was not, therefore, without a certain amount of fear and trembling, that I left home in the fall of 1823, and became myself matriculated, as a student, in the “school of the prophets” at Princeton. J.W.N.

2006-10-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

Chap. II.

Four Years of College Life.

My Charleston grand-uncle, after whom I was named, assumed the charge of my college education; and by the advice of his brother, Dr. Hugh Williamson, of New York, who had himself offered the same generous service in my favor, I was sent for this purpose in the fall of 1817 to Union College, in Schenectady, N. Y., which was then in the zenith of its popularity under the presidency of the late Dr. Eliphalet Nott. The place seemed far off at that time, and although the first steamboats were running on the North River, it took in fact about as much time to reach it as is now required for an overland trip to California. On my way I met, for the first and last time, my patriarchal kinsman, Dr. Williamson, and was sufficiently overawed by his venerable and commanding presence. His one only word of counsel to me was: “Take care my boy, that you do not learn to smoke; for smoking will lead you to drinking, and that is the end of all good.” I remembered his advice, and have kept clear of smoking, and all use of tobacco, to the present day.

Union College had at this time a better reputation than it deserved. Dr. Nott himself took only a very small part in its actual work of instruction, and this itself never amounted to much more than an empty form. The institution lived largely on the outside credit of his name. It was a mistake in my own case, at the same time, that I was sent to college at too early an age. I was the youngest and smallest student in my class, and a mere unfledged boy, I may say, on to the end of my college course. I maintained a very respectable standing, however, in my studies, and graduated with honor in the year 1821. But my health was broken; and I returned home, to be the next three years a burden to myself, and all around me, through a long course of dyspeptic sufferings, on which I still look back as a sort of horrible nightmare, covering with gloom the best season of my youth.

My college years exercised, of course, an important influence on my religious life. Favorable, it might be considered in some respects; but in other respects as I have come to see, it was decidedly unfavorable. Union College was organized on the principle of representing the collective Christianity of the so-called evangelical denominations; and in this view proceeded throughout, practically, on the idea, that the relation of religion to secular education is abstract and outward only—the two spheres having nothing to do with each other in fact, except as mutually complemental sides in the end of what should be considered a right general human culture. The common delusion by which it is imagined so widely, that the school should be divorced from the church, and that faith is of no account for learning and science. We had religion in college, so far at least as morning and evening prayers went; and we were required, on Sundays, to attend the different churches in town. But there was no real church life, as such, in the institution itself. It seemed to be set only for the apprenticing of its pupils in the different departments of common academical knowledge, and not at for bringing them forward in the discipline of a true Christian life. That was left to outside, more or less sporadic and irregular appliances altogether, and entered in no way into the educational economy of the college itself as its all-pervading spirit and soul.

All this involved, of course—although, alas, I knew it not then—a very serious falling away from the educational and churchly scheme of religion, in which I had been previously born and bred. It was my very first contact with the genius of New-England Puritanism, in its character of contradiction to the old Reformed faith, as I had been baptized into it, in its Presbyterian form, at Middle-Spring. It is hardly necessary to say, that circumstanced as I then was, I had no power to withstand the shock. It brought to pass, what amounted to me, to a complete breaking up of all my previous Christian life. For I had come to college, a boy of strongly pious dispositions and exemplary religious habits, never doubting but that I was in some way a Christian, though it had not come with me yet (unfortunately) to what is called a public profession of religion. But now one of the first lessons inculcated indirectly by this unchurchly system, was that all this must pass for nothing, and that I must learn to look upon myself as an outcast from the family and kingdom of God, before I could come to be in either the right way. Such, especially, was the instruction I came under, when a “revival of religion,” as it was called, made its appearance among us, and brought all to a practical point. This took place in connection with an extended system of revivals, which the celebrated Mr. Nettleton (to my mind, in those days, the impersonation of the Apostle Paul) was then carrying forward with great success in all that region. The system appeared under its best character, it is well known, in his hands, and was altogether different from what it became afterwards in the hands of such men as Finney and Gallegher; when Mr. Nettleton himself withdrew from it his countenance. Our college awakening was no part of the proper college order as such; Dr. Nott had nothing to do with it; it formed a sort of temporary outside episode, conducted by our Professor of Mathematics, the Rev. Dr. Macanley (on whose name a sad cloud fell afterwards), and certain “pious students,” previously Christianized, secundum artem, who now all at once, were found competent to assist him in bringing souls to the new birth. Miserable obstetricians the whole of them, as I now only too well remember! For I, along with others, came into their hands in anxious meetings, and underwent the torture of their mechanical counsel and talk. One after another, however, the anxious obtained “hope;” each new case, as it were, stimulating another; and finally, among the last, I struggled into something of the sort myself, a feeble trembling sense of comfort—which my spiritual advisors, then, had no difficulty accepting as all that the case required. In this way I was converted, and brought into the Church—as if I had been altogether out of it before—about the close of the seventeenth year of my age. My conversion was not fully up to my own idea, at the time, of what a change should be; but it was a earnest and thorough, no doubt, as that of any of my fellow converts.

God forbid that I should undervalue the significance of this momentous passage in my life; it was for me a true awakening and decision in the great concern of personal and experimental religion, which went beyond all I had known before, and entered deeply into all my subsequent history. But God forbid also, on the other hand, that I should not, at the same time, speak freely of the vast error and fault there was in the whole movement. It was based throughout on the principle, that regeneration and conversion lay outside of the Church, had nothing to do with baptism and Christian education, required rather a looking away from all this as more a bar than a help to the process, and were to be sought only in the way of magical illapse or stroke from the Spirit of God (what Dr. Bushnell has named the ictic experience), as something precedent and preliminary to entering the true fold of the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls! To realize this, then, became the inward strain and effort of the anxious soul; and what was held to be saving faith in the end, consisted largely in believing that the realization was reached. And so afterwards also, all was made to turn, in the life of religion, on alternating frames and states, and introverted self-inspection, more or less—under the guidance of some such work as Edwards on the Affections. An intense subjectivity, in one word—which is something always impotent and poor—took the place of a proper contemplation of the grand and glorious objectivitics of the Christian life, in which all true power of the Gospel at last lies. My own “experience” in this way, at the time here under consideration, was not wholesome, but very morbid rather and weak. Alas, where was my mother, the Church, at the very time I most needed her fostering arms? Where was she, I mean, with her true sacramental sympathy and care? How much better it had been for me, if I had only been properly drawn forth from myself by some right soul-communication with the mysteries of the old Christian creed. As it was, I could not repeat the creed, and as yet, knew it only as one of the questionable relics of Popery. I had never heard it at Middle-Spring; and it was entirely foreign to the religious spirit of Union College.

So it went on with my spiritual life to the close of my college course in 1821, when, as I have said before, I returned home a complete bankrupt, for the time, in bodily health. My whole constitution, indeed, was, I may say, in an invalid state. I was dyspeptic both in body and mind. J.W.N.

2006-10-12T16:52:00.000-04:00

John Williamson Nevin. “My Own Life.” Reformed Church Messenger (1867-1874); Mar 2, 1870, 36, 9.

MY OWN LIFE

Chap. I.

My Childhood and Early Youth.

Having been called upon to furnish the necessary material for some account of my life, to be given to the world in permanent form, it seems to me best, on the whole, that I should do it in the way at once of a general self-biography, using the first person rather than the third; the more especially so, because it has been desired that the sketch in question should take in something at least of my inward life along with its merely outward facts.

I was born on the 20th of February, 1803, of respectable parentage, in Franklin county, Pennsylvania. My Father’s mother was a Williamson, sister to the distinguished Hugh Williamson, LL.D., one of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, and a man otherwise prominent during the period of the Revolutionary War, who held a high place afterwards also, in the world of letters, as the editor of the History of North Carolina, an Essay on Climate, and other publications. The family, in the coat of arms and otherwise, has always claimed descent (how truly I pretend not to say) from the celebrated Scottish chieftain, Sir William Wallace. Another brother lived and died as an Episcopal clergyman in England, where he is honorably represented by descendants mostly of the third generation. A third brother, Capt. John Williamson, became a successful and wealthy merchant, in Charleston, S.C.; and it was as namesake to him in particular, that I got my own middle name of Williamson—the only proper Christian name, in fact, by which I was ever known or spoken of in my early life.

Being of what is called Scotch-Irish extraction, I was by birth and blood also, a Presbyterian; and as my parents were both conscientious and exemplary professors of religion, I was, as a matter of course, carefully brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, according to the Presbyterian faith as it then stood; I say with purpose as it then stood; for I cannot help seeing and feeling, that a very material change has come upon it since, and this in a way not without serious interest for my own religious life.

What I mean, will appear at once, when I state that the old Presbyterian faith, into which I was born, was based throughout on the idea of covenant family religion, church membership by God’s holy act in baptism, and following this a regular catechetical training of the young, with direct reference to their coming to the Lord’s table. In one word, all proceeded on the theory of sacramental, educational religion, as it had belonged properly to all the national branches of the Reformed Church in Europe from the beginning. In this respect the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, and Scotland were of one mind; and this mind still ruled at the time to which I now refer, the Presbyterianism of this country. True, there was no use here of the rite of confirmation in admitting catechumens to full communion with the Church; but there was, what was considered to be substantially the same thing, in the way they were solemnly received by the church session. The system was churchly, as holding the Church in her visible character to be the medium of salvation for her baptized children, in the sense of that memorable declaration of Calvin (Inst. iv. c. 1, §. 4), where, speaking of her title, Mother, he says: There is no other entrance into life, save as she may conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her loving care to the end.

This was the system of educational religion in which it was my privilege to grow up, through the first years of my life, under the best sort of parental care, in the venerable old Presbyterian Church of Middle-Spring. I was baptized by Dr. Robert Cooper, the retired former pastor of the congregation, just about the time that the vacant charge passed into the hands of his successor, the Rev. John Moodey; who also became Doctor of Divinity many years after—a deserved distinction, which I had the pleasure myself of obtaining for him from the Trustees of Marshall College, then at Mercersburg. His pastorate continued for half a century; in the course of which time a great change came over the Presbyterian Church at large, that brought with it in the end no small change also, in the character of this old country charge. But during my childhood and boyhood all was still, in the life and spirit of the congregation, as it had been from the beginning. The Scotch regime was in full force. Pastoral visitation was a business, as much as preaching. The school was held to be of right auxiliary to the church; and the catechism stood in honor and use everywhere as the great organ of what was held to be a sound religious education. Every Sunday evening, especially, was devoted to more or less catechization in the family. I was put on simple Bible questions as soon as I could speak. Then came the Mother’s Catechism, as it was called; and then the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism—hard to be understood, but wholesome for future use. The same instruction met me again in the common school; where it was usual for the master, in those days, to examine his scholars once a week in the Catechism. All this as part of the established church system, and only to make room for its full operation in a higher form, where the work fell into the hands of the pastor himself, and was understood all round to form a main portion of his proper pastoral trust.

There were two modes, in which such higher church instruction was carried forward; the practice varying from one to the other in different years. In one year, it was by the pastor’s visiting one family after another, and catechizing each household separately; while in another year, it would be by bringing whole neighborhoods before him at some central place, where then, in the presence of one or more of the elders, an examination was held in a public and solemn way. On these occasions, the children were examined first; but after them the grown people also, on some portion of the Larger Westminster Catechism previously assigned for the purpose.

With all this comprehensive catechetical system corresponded the general church life of those days. It was staid, systematical, and grave; making much of sound doctrine; wonderfully bound to established forms; and not without a large sense for the objective side of religion embodied in the means of grace. There was much of this especially joined with the use of the holy sacraments. Each communion season was a four days’ meeting, where all revolved around the central service of the Lord’s table on the Sabbath; with a real and not simply nominal humiliation and fast going before, on Friday, in the way of special preparation for such near and solemn approach to God.

This was fifty years ago. Such was the general order of religion then with all the Presbyterian churches of the Cumberland Valley. But what has become of it since? Wonderful to think of, it has almost entirely passed away. Not only Rouse’s Psalms—to which I seem to listen still as a fond echo borne in upon my soul from the old stone church at Middle-Spring—have passed away with the whole generation that sung them; but the old catechetical system also is gone, and along with it the general scheme of religion to which it belonged, and which it served to hold together. A very great revolution in fact; which, however, has been brought to pass in so gentle and noiseless a way, that it is difficult now for the present generation to understand it, or to make any proper account of it whatever.

I look upon it as another important part of my early training, worthy of note, that I was brought up on a farm, in the midst of a people of simple and plain manners; and that I became early familiar also, with the scenes and employments of country life; being put myself in fact to all sorts of farm work, just as soon and as far as I was found to have any power of being useful in this way.

My father, however, though only a common farmer, was himself a man of liberal education, a graduate of Dickenson College, in the days of Dr. Nesbit—one who delighted in books, and who was honored far and wide for his superior intelligence, as well as for his excellent character generally; and under his auspices, therefore, my country training was made to look from the beginning toward a course of full college learning. At an early day the Latin Grammar was put into my hands, and my father himself became my teacher. My lessons were studied irregularly—sometimes in the barn, and sometimes in the field—and I had no fixed times for recitation. But the course was full, and the drill severe; first in Latin, and afterwards also, in Greek; being worth more to me in truth, as I came to know at a later day, than all I learned of these languages subsequently in passing through college. --J.W.N.

2006-10-12T16:47:00.000-04:00

i am in the process of doing some transcription that will hopefully come in handy for my senior thesis. the first project is to get his own biographical essay, my life, which appeared in the weekly periodical of the german reformed church in six installments in early 1870, into a readble text. i think i'll post them here incase anyone else is interested in reading them.

2006-10-04T13:19:00.000-04:00

The Zwinglian memorialist view of the sacraments is similar to Abelard's atonement theology to the extent that Abelard takes away an activity in the crucifixion.

2006-10-03T15:54:00.000-04:00

"If our thinking never merits the triumphalist title of Truth and there is no other knower whose knowledge is the Truth, then the truth is that there is no Truth. But if the first truth is combined with a theistic premise, the result will be: The truth is that there is Truth, but not for us, only for God."
Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology

2006-10-02T08:04:00.000-04:00

"Man's understanding is pierced by a heavy spear when all the thoughts that proceed from him are mocked as stupid, frivolous, insane, and perverse." John Calvin on Ps. 62:9, Inst. 1:2:1

2006-08-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

"As the Eucharist forms the very heart of the whole Christian worship, so it is clear that the entire question of the church, which all are compelled to acknowledge—the great life problem of the age—centers ultimately in the sacramental question as its inmost heart and core. 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."--John Williamson Nevin in The Mystical Presence

2006-06-30T09:11:00.000-04:00

Flannery O'Connor on the Eucharist: "If it were only a symbol, I'd say to Hell with it."

2006-06-30T09:08:00.000-04:00

ben stamper (walking out the door for breakfast): "we'll be right back."
lenny smith: "that's what Jesus said and look how long it's taken him."

2006-05-08T07:55:00.000-04:00

thanks to mark traphagen for sharing this.

2006-05-03T02:44:00.000-04:00

d.g. hart has a license plate on his car that reads "old life."

2006-04-30T15:51:00.000-04:00

i have always been astounded at the difference it makes to read that Jesus washed his disciples' feet before Judas left the night of his betrayal. today while reading Mark i noticed the weight of the fact that Judas is included in the ordaining of the apostles in 3:13-20. in the context of Mark it is clear that these 12 are different than the mutitudes of followers/disciple of Jesus. they are set apart "so that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons." Judas is ordained and given this vocation (ability?). another stark reminder that the church is wheat and tares from pew to pulpit. not, of course, to forget that Judas is clearly anathematized later, only to remember that the gifts of God do not depend on the holiness of the instruments in his hands for their efficacy. chalk Judas up with Babylon, Assyria, snd the Scripture-burning bishops of the early church and to a lesser degree, anyone God has ever set apart to do his will.

2006-04-28T11:26:00.000-04:00

"First of all, believe that there is one God who created and finished all things, and made all things out of nothing." --Hermas II.1.1

"As, therefore, in all these respects God is more powerful than man, so also in this; that out of things that are not He creates and has created things that are, and whatever He pleases, as He pleases." --Theophilus to Autolycus II.4

2006-04-26T18:51:00.000-04:00

i had my first class with a real-life Jesus seminar fellow this morning. hal taussig, nt professor at uts gave us a quick introduction to the aim and methodology of the Jesus seminar and then a mini-lecture on non-canonical gospels. he was actually a good-spirited man, willing to poke fun at the seminar's work. unfortuneately it really isn't funny in the end. or maybe it is funny, laughable. his final remarks on Jesus as it relates to the recent Jesus and empire stuff floating around were a rejection of a socially radical Jesus. Jesus, for him, promotes social change more like a pop-artist. he is only subversive by accident. he is a sage, drawing surprising conclusions from everyday peasant life. in fact, taussig says, he is only subversive in the same way that a hip-hop artist is subversive. and you never thought Jesus had anything in common with 50 cent.

i asked him why he preferred the not consciously messianic peasant sage over an apocalyptic mesiah Jesus when there are so many other well-attested but failed such figures in the second temple period. his reply was that the gospel of thomas is where his bias comes from. there we have a non-narrative "sayings gospel" genre that he assumes is older than any sort of narrative gospel tradition. that is what it all comes down to for him.

2006-04-22T09:09:00.000-04:00

Who are the 'Ethnos'?

tracing the NT's use of the word 'ethnos,' usually translated as 'gentile' presents some interesting things. first, Matthew uses of the word (15 times) more than Mark (6 times) and Luke (8 times) combined. further, Matthew, Mark and Luke all use the word exclusively from a Jewish frame of reference. that is, the ethnos are non-Jews, as opposed to the Roman use of ethnos as signifying the non-Roman. ethnos only means uncircumcised for the Jew. what we see in the synoptic Gospels is a standard use of the term to denote the alien other, the outsider.

when we look at how John uses the term it is stiking that it always applies, not to the uncircumcised 'Gentile' but to the 'nation' of Israel. this undoubtedly says something about intended audience of the respective Gospels. the difference in perspective, the Jewish and the wider perspective about who is ethnos, would be highlighted if the word were translated the same in every instance but this would distort the pejorative use of the term in the synoptics.

interestingly, Paul's Gospel "to the Jew first, but also to the 'ethnos'" (Rom. 9:24) uses the term in a way that reflects both the synoptics and John's perspective. Paul argues to the Jew that their God must neccesarily be God of the 'ethnos' also. in the epistle to the Ephesians the mystery of the Church is that the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile is now broken down, both are in Christ's body which is elsewhere said to be neither Jew nor Greek (Gal. 5:8).

notice the ironic way solidarity is created for all these groups branded 'ethnos' by each other in Acts 4:27 as the Christians pray Psalm 2:1 (quoted in 4:25) : "For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together." Against Jesus, all these people/groups alike rage. No longer is the gentile/other the non-Jew or the non-Roman but the non-Jesus, all are united together in being non-Jesus, non-human, non-Israel. Not all Israel is Israel. By grace through faith we are brought into union with this Man, this other and become one in a body where ther is no longer Jew nor Greek, one or other.

2006-04-21T18:09:00.000-04:00

i recently came across a reference to the frescoes of the dura-europos synagogue in 3rd century syria. a quick search led to a site maintained by yale divinity school with several images of the frescoes. that these are found in a synagogue is interesting. apparently, the second commandment did not restrict the depiction of numerous biblical scenes, heroes and heroines for these jews. even the Lord is depicted both in the frescoe of the parting of the red sea and also in a mteaphorical frescoe that shows the deliverance of his people from death to life--a pair of hands.

2006-04-20T18:43:00.000-04:00

2 Corinthians 12:1-4, A Neglected Text?

I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

2006-04-19T08:33:00.000-04:00

"When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil. Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and speak God's truth and not his own lie...When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who said, "I am the truth." When, therefore, man lives according to himself--that is, according to man, not according to God--assuredly he lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live according to himself, but according to Him that made him--in other words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie."

---Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV.4

2006-04-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

Francis Turretin on Reason, Revelation and Natural Theology

I am preparing to write a paper on the realtionship of Turretin as a representative Reformed Scholastic to the larger tradition of Scholasticism. Richard A. Muller has done all of the hard work, I am simply going to synthesize a few points, nothing creative. I am only trying to acquaint myself with how Reformed theologians have answered the Nature/Grace question before Karl Barth.

Richard Muller published "Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology," in Church History, Vol. 55, No. 2, June 1986. In it he outlines Turretin's argument on the subservient role of reason to theology. It is interesting to note that the question is not reason's relationship to faith but to theology (read "God's self disclosure"). In place of Faith taking reason and strangling the beast as Barth would have it, Turretin, following Augustine and Aquinas argues that revelation "cleanses" nature. I wonder if he might use the word "animates" or perhaps even "resurrects."

2006-04-11T00:30:00.000-04:00

i only just began reading James k. a. smith's introduction to radical orthodoxy last week. related to stuff in that book, today i was out, basking for a few minutes in the new spring sun in the middle of union's quadrangle thinking about the trouble i am having finding the right way to consistently criticize the aforementioned book by langdon gilkey and not fall into some stripe of christian reconstructionism (not that i am totally averse to falling into it, only wary by instinct and previous experience). it seems like there is something not quite right with the kuyperian model of social spheres. i find a certain incarnation of kuyper, maybe it is only a case of name-dropping, that is a little stomach turning, accomodationist ala chuck colson. i was thinking about the rcc strain of rhetoric on being a supra-national entity and also the way that the menonites have been able to maintain a ditinctly christian social vision (in spite of their poor theology). i was also reminded of the admirable anti-patriotism of the jehovah's witnesses. there must be ways of appropriating this in a distinctly reformed way, i am just not sure how. i'm not even sure how to write this criticism of gilkey without sounding like greg bahnsen.

coincidentally, i stumbled across an article by james k.a. smith, neocalvinism...maybe later on in the afternoon. it addresses this very question and is worth reading for anyone thinking about the intersection of kuyperianism and radical orthodoxy or how to be staunchly calvinistic in social and political contexts.

2006-04-09T13:56:00.000-04:00

I have been labeled a fundamentalist on two occasions recently and after these discussions have been more willing to wear the epithet proudly. In both situations it was clear that for my friends 'fundamentalist' was not meant to describe a person who tries to show that the claims of the Bible are scientifically verifiable (though they may or may not be at various points, that has not been my first concern in these conversations) in the way that the the label has been placed most recently on those involved in the debate over so-called "intelligent design" being taught in public schools. I was proud to wear the name when it was made clear that the people calling me a fundamentalist did so because I believe in the superiority of the Holy Trinity over all that is, and also that the Scriptures are God's authoritative words for the world.

In Langdon Gilkey's Blue Twilight he claims to be confused by the "paradoxical" argument of 'creationists' who maintain both the scientific viability of their "mythic religion" but also the mythic religious nature of science's (noticibly not an "-ism" in contrast to the fundamental-ism and creation-ism of the other side) claims about origins. Though in good tillichian fashion he concedes at the beginning of this little book the mythic nature of "all" human expressions of self-consciousness (apparently "all" in this case means "all except for this 'clear, self-evident fact' that is beyond dispute" concerning the mythic nature of human self-consciousness) as well as the challenge of the "new philosophy of science" for modern assumptions about the universe, he does not seem to recognize the radical implications of this concession. Maybe he is simply unwilling to follow them and see the correlationist project crumble with along with the dominant structure it has always killed itself to placate.

Gilkey's use of the term fundamentlaist is a good illustration of the confused state of much of the debate that goes on between liberal and conservative Christians. Fundamentalist creationists are for Gilkey both a.) those who argue that the the Bible meets the standards of science as well as b.) those who claim that science is itself religious in many ways. The only thing that holds is that a fundamentalist is anyone Gilkey thinks is backwards. In fact, this is the way the term is usually used also. Fundamentalists are the backwards others. They are kind of like terrorists (i don't think it is coincidental that these two words are often put together).

There is a great irony in Gilkey's first use of the term. He is a fundamentalist! for him it is unacceptable that certain Christians attempt to vindicate their beliefs with science and yet this very goal is what characterizes the whole of what follows in this little book and indeed his entire C.V. Gilkey sits squarely in the Tubingen tradition. And yet I am a fundamentlaist to him, and to my friends at U.T.S. because i repeatedly call into question the claim of "science" to possess an a-religious status.

(my apologies for the too-long parentetical statements in the paragraphs above)

2006-04-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

Francis Turretin and the Nature of Theology

Francis Turretin takes up the question of both the genus and the object of theology in QQ. V-XI of the Institutes of Elentic Theology. For Turretin theology is not scientia. He isolates three kinds of subjective knowing, habitus sciendi, habitus credendi, and habitus opiniandi. The second is related to theological knowledge. Each of these dispositions gives rise to a distinct form of assent respectively, assensus mentis (resting on firm and certain reasoning), fides (resting on testimony), and opino (resting on probable reason). Theology emphatically does not come under any of Aristotle's habitus intellectuales but is related analogically to sapientia.

2006-03-24T11:27:00.001-05:00

Two days ago at work, deep in the stacks of the Burke Library looking for lost books, I ran across a little title on the Apostle's Creed. Credo, by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Reading it on the train ride home I was struck by how Balthasar speaks, not giving historic and scriptural data for proof, but simply as though the things confessed in the creed are. This abandonment of apologetic language is what I have often fallen back on when trying to explain myself to my fellow classmates. I am a Christian, I see that the world is God's world. The creed is my philosophy, it describes what ultimately is. My faith in scripture and the Church all flow from this faith that the world is God's world, that he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hands.

Returning to christian orthodoxy for some is a process of re-mythologizing their thinking and believing. This is what it was for Paul Tillich, I think. But there seems to be a sort of disingenuous nature to this process. Can one simply believe against all the evidence that there is a tooth fairy after having long dis-believed in the tooth fairy simply because that disbelief begins all of a sudden to make one miserable? This sort of re-conversion despite the "evidence" doesn't doubt the creed of Descartes et. al. that discovered the evidence in the first place. Far better to give the Christian creed not only legitimacy as a description of the way things are, but authoritative supremacy above all creeds as well.

I was thinking about all of these things on the way home and when I stepped off of the train I saw a man in a wheelchair on the subway platform in front of me. I wondered how he got down there since there is no elevator in the Vernon Jackson station. I try to look panhandlers and the "ugly people" in our city in the eye and be friendly so I said hello to him. He said something just as I was passing but I couldn't hear him so I stopped and turned around. He asked how I was doing and I said I was fine. He said "I'm just glad to be alive." I said, "me too." "You know why I'm still alive?" he asked as he began to point to the ceiling. I said "our heavenly Father." He smiled. Then he said "I have a crazy philosophy." "What's that?" I asked. "That Jesus is going to come back and save us all." I said "that's not crazy, that's the truth."

2006-03-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

PRAYER ON PREPARING TO GO TO SCHOOL

Ps. cxix. 9. Wherin shall a young man establish his way? If he wisely conduct himself according to thy wordl With my heart have I sought thee, allow me not to err from thy precepts.

O Lord, who art the fountain of all wisdom and learning, since thou of thy special goodness hast granted that my youth is intstructed in good arts which may assist me to honest and holy living, grant also, by enlightening my mind, which otherwise labors under blindness, that I may be fit to acquire knowledge; strengthen my memory faithfully to retain what I may have learned: and govern my heart, that I may be willing and eager to profit, lest the opportunity which thou now givest me be lost through my sluggishness. Be pleased therefore to infuse thy Spirit into me, the Spirit of understanding, of truth, judgment, and prudence, lest my study be without success, and the labor of my teacher in vain.

In whatever kind of study I engage, enable me to remember to keep its proper end in view, namely, to know thee in Christ Jesus thy Son; and may every thing that I learn assist me to observe the right rule of godliness. And seeing thou promisest that thou wilt bestow wisdom on babes, and such as are humble, and the knowledge of thyself on the upright in heart, while thou declarest that thou wilt cast down the wicked and the proud, so that they will fade away in their ways, I entreat that thou would be pleased to turn me to true humility, that thus I may show myself teachable and obedient first of all to thyself, and then to those also who by thy authority are placed over me. Be pleased at the same time to root out all viscous desires from my heart, and inspire it with an earnest desire of seeking thee. Finally, let the only aim at which I aim be so to qualify myself early in life, that when I grow up I may serve thee in whatever station thou mayest assign me.
Amen.

The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will make known his covenant unto them. (Ps. xxv. 14.)

--John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises: Forms of Godly Prayer