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Schaff and Nevin, Colleagues at Mercersburg: The Church Question
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
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For both Schaff and Nevin, while they were colleagues at Mercersburg, the issue of issues in mid-nineteenth century America as well as in Continental Europe and in England, was “the church question.” This subject has already been provided a seminal treatment by James H. Nichols to which all later students of Mercersburg Theology are deeply indebted. The purpose of this article is to attempt to shed new light on this question by focusing upon what was for both of them a critical ecclesiological issue, one upon which they in part agreed and in part disagreed—namely, the question of historical development. It is this issue which I believe especially provoked Nevin's theological crisis. This essay will also seek to describe Schaff's role in this crisis.
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References
1. For general treatments of the controversy concerning the doctrine of the church in Germany, England, and the United States in the early to mid-nineteenth century, see Welch, Claude, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1972), 1. 190–232Google Scholar; Conser, Walter H. Jr, Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany, England, and America 1815–1866 (Macon, Ga., 1984).Google ScholarFor Germany, see Hirsch, Emanuel, Geschichte der neuern Evangelischen Theologie, 5 vols. (Gütersloh, 1968), 4th ed., 5. 145–231Google Scholar; Barczay, Gyula, Ecclesia semper reformanda: Eine Untersuchung zum Kirchenbegriff des 19. Jahrhunderts (Zürich, 1961);Google ScholarBeckmann, Klaus-Martin, Unitas Ecclesiae: Eine systematische Studie zur Theologiegeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh, 1967)Google Scholar; Fagerberg, H., Bekenntnis Kirche und Amt in der deutschen Konfessionellen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Uppsala, 1952)Google Scholar; for England, see especially Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, Part 1 (New York, 1966),Google Scholarand Bowen, Desmond, The Idea of the Victorian Church (Montreal, 1968)Google Scholar; and for America, see Ahlstrom, Sidney E., A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972), pp. 385–632;Google ScholarMiller, Perry, The Life of the Mind in America (London, 1966), pp. 3–95Google Scholar; Yoder, Don, “Christian Unity in Nineteenth Century America,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. Ruth, Rouse and Neill, Stephen C. (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 221–259.Google Scholar
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7. Schaff, Philip, Amerika (Berlin, 1854), p. 243Google Scholar. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the German are mine. Nevin's study of German theology commenced already in his period as professor at Allegheny Seminary in Pittsburgh with the reading of Neander. He tells us in his autobiography that he learned German to read Neander, who awakened in him the beginning of a historical consciousness. Nevin, John W., My Own Life: The Earlier Years, Papers of the Eastern Chapter of the Historical Society of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, 1 vol. (Lancaster, Pa., 1964), 1. 139–144. See below, n. 24. On Nevin and German theology, see below, n. 20.Google Scholar
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11. Schaff, Philip, What is Church History ? Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 94.Google ScholarCompare with Baur, F. C., Der Gegensatz des Katholicismus und Protestantismus nach den Prinzipien und Hauptdogmen der beiden Lehrbegriffe. Mil besonderer Rücksicht auf Herrn Dr. Möhler's Symbolik (Tübingen, 1836), p. 54Google Scholar; and The Epochs of Church Historiography in Ferdinand Christian Baur on the Writing of Church History, ed. and tr. Hodgson, Peter C., (New York, 1968), pp. 249, 25. In spite of this borrowing from Baur, Schaff showed himself to have more empathy with the pietistic, supernatural approach to the New Testament and church history of Neander than with the critical approach of Baur.Google ScholarSee Penzel, , “Church History in Context,” pp. 231, 236–240,Google Scholarand Bowden, , Church History in the Age of Science, pp. 48–53.Google Scholar
12. In his Gegensatz (p. 594) Baur asserted that both Catholicism and Protestantism are inclined toward a onesidedness, Catholicism toward placing objectivity over subjectivity and Protestantism toward placing subjectivity over objectivity.
13. Schaff, , The Principle of Protestantism, p. 134.Google Scholar This was the view of Hengstenberg as pointed out by Nevin, in “Early Christianity” (Catholic and Reformed, p. 195Google Scholar, n.) though Nevin used no names to illustrate the rationalistic infidelity which he said was worse than Catholicism. For Hengstenberg's attack on the new rationalists, see, for example, Evangelische Kirchenzeitung 33 (1843): 4–8,Google Scholarand Fagerberg, Bekenntnis Kirche, p.46.Google Scholar
14. Schaff, , The Principle of Protestantism, pp. 168, 171–172.Google Scholar
15. On the Tractarian attack on the Reformation, see Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1. 174–175.Google Scholar
16. Schaff, , The Principle of Protestantism, p. 165.Google Scholar
17. Ibid., p. 217–218. This typology is found in Schelling's thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh lectures on Die Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung, delivered at Berlin, 1841–1845. Penzel, Klaus has provided a translation of portions of these texts in “A Nineteenth Century Ecumenical Vision: F. W. J. Schelling,” Lutheran Quarterly 18 (1966): 362–378Google Scholar, and an analysis of them in “ A Chapter in the History of the Ecumenical Quest: Schelling and Schleiermacher,” Church History 33 (1964): 322–337. The theme of “Evangelical Catholicism” was also strong in the high church Prussian orthodoxy of Hengstenberg and the Gerlachs in Berlin, with whom Schaff had just been associated. See below, n. 20. The Vermittlingstheologie also sought not only the union of Lutherans and the Reformed but, as Nitzsch stated to Mohler, “the union of the Catholic tendency with the Protestant.” Nitzsch, C. I., Eine protestantische Beantwortung der Symbolik Dr. Möhlers (Hamburg, 1835), p. 238, cited and quoted by Beckmann, Unitas Ecclesiae, p. 83, n. 24.Google Scholar
18. On this heresy trial, see Shriver, George H., ed., American Religious Heretics (New York, 1966), pp. 18–55Google Scholar. Shriver correctly points out that Schaff underwent a second trial, not before synod but before the seminary's Board of Visitors concerning the views he expressed in his Berlin dissertation, Die Sünde wider den Heiligen Geist about a “middle state” for heathen and Christians whose faith was immature at death. On Berg and the Protestant “no popery” campaign of the early 1840s, see Billington, Roy A., The Protestant Crusade (Gloucester, Mass., 1963, reprint of 1938 ed.), pp. 170–185.Google Scholar
19. On the denial of Catholic baptism action taken under the influence of the fiery anti-papal sermons of Rev. Robert J.Breckinridge, see Billington, p. 176. Nevin, John W., “Pseudo-Protestantism,” Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church (hereafter WM), 10:48 (13 Aug. 1845)Google Scholar; WM 10:52 (10 sept. 1845).
20. Only a week before Schaff's inaugural, Berg had preached a sermon to the synod meeting in Allentown in which he argued for the complete or nonprogressive nature of religious truth and for the roots of the German Reformed Church in the Waldenses. J. F. Berg , “A Sermon Delivered at the Opening of the Synod of the German Reformed Church at Allentown, Pennsylvania, October 17, 1844,” WM 10:10 (20 Nov. 1844). See also Nichols, Romanticism, pp. 107–109 and Bowden, Church History in the Age of Science, pp. 32–35.
21. WM 10:50 (27 Aug. 1845). At this point I must register a disagreement with Nichols's close identification of the Mercersburg Theology with the Lutheran Confessional Theology of Lohe, Vilmar, Kliefoth (The Mercersburg Theology, pp. 11, 14, 16). To be sure, Nevin and Schaff shared with these conservative Lutherans an organic view of the church and its development along with a concomitant rejection of individualism, a high doctrine of ministry and sacraments, and a strong appreciation of the Protestant Confessions (although Nevin came increasingly to revere even more highly the ancient creeds, especially the Apostles' Creed). They rejected, however, a backward looking rigid confessionalism and were more open to new forms for the present and future life of the church. Furthermore, they were unionist rather than strictly confessional, whether Lutheran or Reformed, in their ecclesiological sentiments. Like Schaff, (see Penzel, Klaus, Philip Schaff, Historian and Ambassador of the Universal Church: Selected Writings [Macon, Ga., 1991], pp. xxv–xxviii),Google Scholar Nevin is more properly linked with various “mediating theologians,” especially Ullmann, Rothe and Dorner in spite of his later conflict with Dorner on church, sacraments, and ministry. His statement here falls in line with the program of “mediation” as formulated by Ullmann and Umbreit in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1827). That program was intended to bring about the mutual penetration of biblical faith and the scientific spirit so that both extremes, slavery to the letter and the unrestraint of the fanatical spirit, might be overcome. Stephan, H./Schmidt, M., Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Theologie seit dem deutschen Idealismus (Berlin, 1960), p. 188.Google Scholar As a “ Preliminary Essay” to his The Mystical Presence. A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (Philadelphia, 1846), Nevin furnished, as supporting his argument, “a free compressed translation” of Ullmann's famous article, “Über den unterscheidenden Charakter des Christenthums mit Beziehung auf neuere Auffassungsweisen,” TSK 18, 1(1845): 1–61 (later a separate pamphlet, Das Wesen des Christentums), which was a central progammatic work of the Vermittlungstheologie (mediating theology). This essay sets forth the view, in line with Schleiermacher, that Christianity is not so much a new doctrine or a moral rule as a new life, that it is a fully developed concrete organism centered in Christ, who is the unity of God and man and who communicates this divine-human unity to human beings.See Holte, R., Die Vermiltlungstheologie (Uppsala, 1965), pp. 91–113.Google Scholar In a brief article in the Mercersburg Review of 1867 concerning “Our Relations to Germany,” written in the light of Dorner's critique of his theology, Nevin acknowledged his debt to German theology (the names he lists are nearly all “mediating,” not “confessional,” theologians), but he insisted that “we belong to no German school.” Mercersburg Review (hereafter MR) 14 (1867): 628–631. In that essay as well as in an earlier review, “Wilberforce on the Incarnation,” MR 2 (1850): 164–165, Nevin showed his adherence to the aim of the mediating theologians not to rely upon outward authority alone but to unite tradition with philosophy and science. Although, like Schaff, he may have been in part influenced by the high church Prussian orthodoxy (Hengstenberg and the Gerlach brothers) of the early 1840s before it became strictly Lutheran Confessional, his views of Christ, church, ministry and sacrament were in large measure shaped by his own study of the ancient fathers and creeds under the stimulus of such writers as Neander, Dorner, Rothe, Thiersch, Mohler, Taylor and Newman. See below, nn. 34–35, 37–41. On Hengstenberg and the high church Prussian orthodoxy, see Hirsch, 5:170–177; Schoeps, Hans Joachim, Das andere Preussen. Conservative Gestalten und Probleme im Zeitalter Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Honnef, Rhein, 1957), pp. 69–76, 219–224;Google Scholar and Fagerberg, H., Bekenntnis, Kirche und Ami, pp. 35–49;Google Scholar and on Schaff's connection with this movement, see Nichols, Romanticism, pp. 70–74, and Penzel, Philip Schaff, Historian, pp. xxix–xxxiii.
22. WM 10:48 (13 Aug. 1845).
23. WM 10:52 (10 Sept. 1845); 10:50 (27 Aug. 1845).
24. “Heidelberg Catechism,“ WM 6:12 (9 Dec. 1840).
25. It is probably to Neander that Nevin owed the first glimmerings of the romantic idea of organic development with its stress on continuity in history. In his introduction to Schaff's The Principle of Protestantism Nevin described this idea and referred to Schleiermacher and Neander. Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, pp. 44, 46. On the “organic” in German Protestant historical writing of the nineteenth century and the views of Schleiermacher and Neander in particular, see Wilhelm Maurer, “Das Prinzip des organischen in der evangelischen Kirchengeschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts,” pp. 265–276.
26. Nevin, , The Antichrist, pp. 29, 34.Google Scholar
27. See Nevin, John W.,“The Church,” in The Mercersburg Theology, ed. Nichols, J. H., p. 69–70Google Scholar and Nevin, The Antichrist, p. 69.
28. Nevin, , The Antichrist, pp. 88Google Scholar, 69, 72, 76. Nevin here borrowed an expression of Ullmann. “Über den unterscheidenden Charakter des Christenthums,” p. 16.
29. Nevin, John W., “The Sect System,” MR 1 (1849): 537, 539.Google Scholar
30. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1.250–271; Bowen, The Idea of the Victorian Church, pp. 96–111.Google Scholar
31. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1.287–309.Google Scholar
32. Nevin, John W., “The Anglican Crisis,” MR 3 (1851): 359–379.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., pp. 395–396.
34. Nevin, John W., “True and False Protestantism,” MR 1 (1849): 104.Google Scholar
35. For Rothe, Richard, see his Die Anfänge der christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung (Wittenberg, 1837)Google Scholar. Rothe argued that already by the time of Ignatius the church had developed its essential character as an organized visible body centered in the episcopate with the major marks of catholicity, unity, holiness and apostolicity. With Irenaeus and Tertullian and the Alexandrian fathers, but especially with Cyprian, this conception became all the more concrete and evident so that the church was viewed as the indispensable medium of salvation and as having as its Einigkeitspunkt the bishop of Rome. Rothe, like Nevin after him, was especially critical of the notion of an “invisible church” (pp. 99–109). Compare with Philip Schaff, History of the Apostolic Church, p. 120, n. 1, who thought that there was “a very important truth at the bottom of that old protestant distinction.” As a Protestant, Rothe was not concerned that he seemed in this book to be providing a strong historical case for the truth of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church since he did not think that the visible church, whether Catholic or Protestant, was to be the final outcome of the kingdom of God. That development was rather to be the ideal state (pp. 61–65, 110–135), a view with which Nevin and Schaff both sharply disagreed. See Schaff, , “Gallerie der bedeutentensten jetzt Universitätstheologen Deutschlands,” DKF 5 (1852): 172–173Google Scholar; Nevin, , “Our Relations to Germany,” MR 14 (1867): 632.Google Scholar
For Thiersch, H. W. J., see his Vorlesungen über Katholicismus und Protestantismus (Erlangen, 1848)Google Scholar, 2nd. ed. As a recently converted Irvingite, Thiersch viewed both Catholicism and Protestantism from the standpoint of his new faith, which judged both on the basis of the norms of the apostolic church as set forth in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” He was especially critical of Protestantism for its divisiveness and its refusal to acknowledge the application of the apostolic norm to the visible church. Thiersch saw a gradual falling away from the norms and miraculous gifts and powers of the apostolic period in the history of the church, but with the rest of the Irvingites he awaited the reawakening of the apostolic church with all of its offices (Eph. 4:11–13) and charismatic gifts which will be brought about by the imminent second coming of Christ and will effect the reconciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism. See Schaff, s review in DKF 3 (1850): 161–168, 223–234.Google Scholar
For Möhler, J. A., see his Patrologie oder christliche Literärgeschichte. Aus dessen hinterlassenen Handschriften mit Ergänzungen, ed. Reithmayr, F. X. I (Regensburg, 1840).Google Scholar Nevin refers to Mohler for Irenaeus's witness concerning the Eucharistic sacrifice and for Irenaeus's and Tertullian's testimony concerning the relation of Scripture and tradition. Nevin, “Early Christianity,” pp. 242, 247; Möhler, pp. 377–391, 344–357, 738–748. For Taylor, Isaac, see his, Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1844)Google Scholar. In this work Taylor, a learned layman, accused Nicene Christianity of ascetism, celibacy, ritualism, sacramentalism, and worship of relics—all of which were in line with Romanism and incompatible with Scripture and the Protestant basis of Anglicanism in the sixteenth century. The Nicene church was therefore falsely used by the Tractarians as the model for a renewal of the Anglican church. For Newman, see below, nn. 39, 42.
36. Nevin, John W., “Early Christianity,” in Catholic and Reformed, pp. 230–244.Google ScholarCompare with Nevin, , “Cyprian,” MR 4 (1852): 360–363, 366–370, 376–381.Google Scholar
37. Nevin provided extensive extracts from a letter of Bacon to a lady of his church in New Haven concerning his visit to Lyons in which he contrasted the present “pompous and showy worship” of the old cathedral with the “simple prayers and songs” of the church at the time of Irenaeus and in which he contended that the current Evangelical Church of Lyons was more appropriately to be thought the true successor of the church of Irenaeus. “Early Christianity,” pp. 177–180; Bacon's, letter in The American and Foreign Christian Union 2 (1851): 230–233, 264–266.Google ScholarWilson, Daniel, Travels on the Continent of Europe … in the Summer of 1823, From the 4th London ed. (New York, 1836)Google Scholar. Wilson, an ardent evangelical critic of the Oxford Tracts and bishop of Calcutta (1832–1858), had as a parish priest reported on his travels in Europe in these letters and showed himself to be quite critical of Romanism. Compare with Nevin, “Early Christianity,” p. 196.
38. Nevin, “Early Christianity,” p. 265.
39. Ibid., p. 205, n. 1. See Newman, John H., An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845), p. 138.Google Scholar
40. Nevin, “Cyprian,” pp. 387, 419.
41. Nevin, “Early Christianity,“ p. 291.
42 Ibid., pp. 289–291; Newman, pp. 1–3, 6. On Newman's theory, see Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 139–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chadwick is convinced that Newman had not read Möhler and thus was not influenced by him even though he had heard of him, as is indicated by the reference in Newman's essay (p. 27). Chadwick, pp. 109–119. Schaff referred to Möhler's view of tradition which he thought owed something to Protestantism, especially to Schleiermacher. The Principle of Protestantism, p. 102 n. See also pp. 114 n., 120 n., 135 n. On the influence of Schleiermacher, either directly or indirectly through J. S. Drey, on Möhler's concept of organic tradition, see Geiselmann, J. R., J. A. Möhler: Die Einheit der Kirche oder das Prinzip des Katholizismus (Cologne, 1956), Introduction, pp. 31–32, 69–70, 90.Google Scholar
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44. Letter to Brownson, Orestes, 18 August 1852, Brownson Archives, Notre Dame University, quoted in Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, p. 212, and cited p. 213, n. 34.Google Scholar
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46. “Brownson's Quarterly Review,” MR 2 (1850): 56–74.
47. Letter to Orestes Brownson, in Nichols, Romanticism, p. 213.
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49. See Schaff, Philip, “Kirchenchronik (Amerika),” DKF 4 (1851): 430Google Scholar and DKF 5 (1852): 127, in addition to the references in nn. 50–59.
50. Schaff, Philip, “Die deutsche Theologie und die Kirchenfrage,” DKF 5 (1852): 338–342.Google Scholar The essay was translated for MR 5 (Jan. 1853): 124–144. The quotation here concerning Nevin appeared in an extension to a footnote in the English edition, p. 130 n.
51. DKF 5 (1832): 346; MR 5 (Jan. 1853): 135.
52. DKF 5 (1832): 348–350; MR 5 (Jan. 1853): 137–140.
53. DKF 5 (1832): 350; MR 5 (Jan. 1853): 141.
54. MR 5:143 n.
55. Appel, Theodore, Life and Work of John Williamson Nevin (Philadelphia, 1889), pp. 411–417.Google Scholar
56. Schaff, Philip, Amerika (Berlin, 1854), pp. 247, 250–252.Google Scholar
57. Ibid., p. 253. In 1852, Ludwig von Gerlach had written that “nur der bussfertig Protestantismus hat eine Zukunft…auch nur der bussfertige Katholizismus.” Schoeps, Das andere Preussen, p. 75.
58. Schaff, , Amerika, p. 247.Google Scholar
59. Ibid., p. 254. This eschatological theme, rooted in Würtemberg pietism, is a frequent one in Schaffs writings.
60. Nevin, John W., “The Dutch Crusade,” MR 6 (01 1854): 78.Google Scholar
61. Ibid., pp. 92, 102–103, 108.
62. Nevin, John W., “Wilberforce on the Eucharist,” MR 6 (04 1854): 187.Google Scholar
63. Letter of Schaff, Philip to Appel, Theodore, 13 Feb. 1889Google Scholar, the Central Archives of the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, Lancaster, Pa. In his Mercersburg years, Schaff often gave expression to his optimism concerning the forward march of history. See, for example, his History of the Apostolic Church, p. 45. On Schaff's Hegelian confidence in “the objective force of history,” which will bring about the ecumenical climax, see Penzel, Klaus, “The Reformation Goes West: The Notion of Historical Development in the Thought of Philip Schaff,” The Journal of Religion 62 (1982): 236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64. Nevin, John W., “Wilberforce on the Incarnation,” MR 2 (1850): 164–167.Google ScholarNevin, John W., “Our Relations to Germany,” MR 14 (1867): 632.Google Scholar