2 John Williamson Nevin, "Noel on Baptism," Mercersburg Review (hereafter, MR) 2:3 (1850) 231-265; Lyman Atwater, "The Children of the Church and Sealing Ordinances," Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review (hereafter, BRPR) 29:1 (1857) 1-34; Charles Hodge, "Neglect of Infant Baptism," BRPR 29:1 (1857) 73-101; "The Church Membership of Infants," BRPR 30:2 (1858) 347-389; E. V. Gerhart, "The Efficacy of Baptism," MR 10:1 (1858) 1-44. Each of these authors refers to numerous books, pamphlets and articles on the subject.
3 The transition from substitutionary (or covenantal) to governmental (or constitutional) to moral influence views of the atonement are key for understanding the basic shifts in American Calvinism. Cf. Allen Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1989) 129-135; Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) 124-130.
4 Nevin quotes several American and German Lutherans on the subject, pointing out that the Lutheran Observer, the leading Lutheran journal in America, had endorsed the Zwinglian position that the Lord's Supper is a mere memorial. See, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1963/1846), 52; "Sartorius on the Person and Work of Christ, MR 1:2 (1849) 168; "Liebner's Christology," MR 3:1 (1851) 65.
5 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton University, 1989); Paul K. Conkin, The Uneasy Center: Reformed Christianity in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1995); ibid., Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1990).
6 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale, 1989); James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985); Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1989; Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980/1957); Fred J. Hood, Reformed America: The Middle and Southern States, 1783-1837 (University: University of Alabama, 1980); Walter H. Conser, Jr., God and the Natural World: Religion and Science in Antebellum America (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993); Theodore Dwight Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1977); George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford, 1994). E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860 (Durham: Duke, 1978).
7 Hood, Reformed America; Marsden, Soul of the American University; ibid., The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale, 1970); James D. Bratt, "Nevin and the Antebellum Culture Wars," in Reformed Confessionalism in Nineteenth-Century America: Essays on the Thought of John Williamson Nevin, edited by Sam Hamstra, Jr. and Arie J. Griffioen (ATLA Monograph Series, No. 38. Lanham: Scarecrow, 1996).
8 C. C. Goen, Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the American Civil War (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985).
9 Cited in Wentz, John Williamson Nevin, American Theologian (New York: Oxford, 1997) 88; For treatment of the period see Marsden, Soul of the American University; Hood, Reformed America; Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity; statistics and some moderately useful analysis can be found in Roger Finke and Rodney Starke, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1992).
10 Cf. Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen and Philosophers: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New Haven: Yale, 1985); James Hastings Nichols Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961); and Charles D. Cashdollar's The Transformation of Theology, 1830-1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America (Princeton: Princeton University, 1989).
11 Two recent studies have examined Hodge's moderate tendencies: John W. Stewart, "Mediating the Center: Charles Hodge on American Science, Language, Literature, and Politics," Studies in Reformed Theology and History 3:1 (Winter 1995); Peter J. Wallace, "The Defense of the Forgotten Center: Charles Hodge and the Enigma of Emancipation in Antebellum America," American Presbyterians (forthcoming, Fall or Winter, 1997).
12 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott, 1846).
13 Wentz outlines his thesis in, Nevin, 11-13.
14 Conser, God and the Natural World, 65-74.
15 As demonstrated by the fact that Nevin was chosen as Hodge's substitute while the latter studied in France and Germany from 1826-28.
16 Hodge, Systematic Theology 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, nd/1871-2) I, 192-3. Although Hodge's Systematics were not published until thirty years after his debates with Nevin, the arguments found here are echoed in his earlier works.
17 Systematic Theology I, 191.
18 ibid., 195.
19 "Turretin and Hodge on Scripture and Theology" (unpublished paper, Wheaton College, April, 1992) 12-14.
20 Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology I. ii. 6. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1993/1679). Cf. Timothy L. Phillips, "Francis Turretin's Idea of Theology and Its Bearing upon His Doctrine of Scripture" (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1986) 138-40.
21 Turretin, I. ii-v. Cf. Phillips, 74-82.
22 Systematic Theology, I, 3.
23 ibid., 57.
24 ibid., 11.
25 ibid., 10.
26 ibid., 6.
27 ibid., 11.
28 ibid., 16.
29 ibid., 187-88; 67-68.
30 ibid., 187.
31 ibid., 16.
32 ibid., 183-8.
33 James Hastings Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961) 46-7. cf. Howard J. B. Ziegler, Frederick Augustus Rauch: American Hegelian (Lancaster: Franklin and Marshall College, 1953).
34 William DiPuccio, "The Foundations of Christian Theology: A Structural Study of the Philosophy and Prolegomena of the Mercersburg Theology" (M.A. Thesis, Wheaton College, 1988), 46.
35 Nevin, Mystical Presence, 209.
36 DiPuccio, 50.
37 Cf. "Sartorius on the Person and Work of Christ," MR 1:2 (1849) 160-161.
38 Nevin, Mystical Presence, 63.
39 Hence Nevin objected strenuously to the modern "Puritan" insistence that the Bible and private judgment could provide an adequate foundation for the church, cf. "Puritanism and the Creed," MR 1:6 (1849) 585-607.
40 "Sartorius on the Person and Work of Christ," 165.
41 "The New Creation in Christ," MR 2:1 (1850) 1-11.
42 Mystical Presence, 244-5.
43 Nevin has an essentially German notion of science which is reflected in several articles: "Puritanism and the Creed," 597, 601; "Wilberforce on the Incarnation," 164, 166; "Catholicism," MR 3:1 (1851) 22.
44 "Hodge on the Ephesians," MR 9:1 (1857) 48-9. Cf. "Cur Deus Homo?" MR 3:3 (1851) 226.
45 ibid., 49; cf. "Noel on Baptism" 242.
46 Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper" MR 2:4 (1850) 433.
47 "Dr. Schaff's Apostolic Church" BRPR 26:1 (1854) 150.
48 Systematic Theology I, 117.
49 ibid., 118.
50 "Dr. Schaff's Apostolic Church," 162.
51 Systematic Theology I, 118.
52 ibid., 118.
53 ibid., 119.
54 "Dr. Schaff's Apostolic Church," 180.
55 ibid., 189-192.
56 Nevin, "Historical Development," MR 1:4 (1849) 512-3.
57 Compare, "Early Christianity," MR 4:1 (1852), reprinted in Catholic and Reformed: Selected Theological Writings of John Williamson Nevin, edited by Charles Yrigoyen, Jr., and George H. Bricker (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1978) 288-295.
58 ibid., 305.
59 Nevin, Mystical Presence, 201. Nevin wrestled with the question of the necessity of the incarnation. He affirms it in the Mystical Presence, and in two early articles, "New Creation in Christ," MR 2:1 (1850) 3-4, and "Liebner's Christology," MR 3:1 (1851) 70-71, but then rejects it two months later in "Cur Deus Homo?" MR 3:3 (1851) 238. I have not found any references to the subject after 1851.
60 "Wilberforce on the Incarnation," 187.
61 ibid., 189.
62 MR 3:4 (1851) 490-512.
63 Nevin, "Zacharias Ursinus," MR 3:4 (1851) 500.
64 ibid. Cf. his treatment of Calvin in Mystical Presence, 67, where he says that Calvin "is clearly the organ and interpreter of the mind of the church, in whose bosom he stood. It will not do to speak of his view of the Lord's supper as the private fancy only of a single man." Of course, Nevin will sharply reject the notion that Calvin's doctrine of election played the same role--so this romantic historiography is used in a particularly limited fashion.
65 For Nevin's argument on this point, see "Hodge on the Ephesians," MR 9:1 (1857) 47-82; "Hodge on the Ephesians, Second Article" MR 9:2 (1857) 192-245. This is Nevin's clearest statement of his utter rejection of the Five Points of Calvinism, on the grounds that its doctrine of predestination vitiates an "objective, historical, organic, and concrete [church] . . . the necessary organ and medium of . . . salvation." (226). As explained below, Hodge had already tossed out Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
66 Both Nevin and Hodge reviewed Horace Bushnell's Christian Nurture, commenting favorably on the idea, though objecting to Bushnell's fading supernaturalism. See Hodge, "Bushnell on Christian Nurture," BRPR 19:4 (1847) 502-539; "Bushnell's Discourses," BRPR 21:2 (1849) 259-278; Nevin, "Educational Religion," Weekly Messenger (23 June, 30 June, 7 July, 14 July 1847); "Natural and Supernatural," MR 11:2 (1859) 176-210. Cf. Glenn A. Hewitt's moderately useful, Regeneration and Morality: A Study of Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, John W. Nevin, and Horace Bushnell (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1991).
67 Nevin quotes the highly favorable review from Dr. Ebrard (author of Das Dogma vom heiligen Abendmahl und seine Geschichte) in, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church," 457.
68 Mystical Presence, 54. Nevin's reference is to Inst. III, xi, 10. Calvin says that the mystical union (or indwelling of Christ) "makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed....We put on Christ and are engrafted into his body-in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him." This was a statement written against the charge that he made naked faith the basis of imputed righteousness, and does not seem to speak of subsisting with Christ by the power of a common life.
69 ibid., 55.
70 ibid., 56-7.
71 ibid., 57.
72 ibid., 58.
73 ibid., 60-2.
74 Mystical Presence, 148-152.
75 ibid., 155.
76 ibid., 156.
77 ibid., 171.
78 ibid., 160.
79 ibid.
80 ibid., 160-1.
81 ibid., 162.
82 ibid., 163.
83 Hodge, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper," in Essays and Reviews, (hereafter, Essays and Reviews) (Robert Carter & Brothers, New York, 1857) 342-3.
84 Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church," 433.
85 Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 345.
86 ibid., 367.
87 ibid., 388. Hodge quotes Nevin: "[the efficacy] belongs to the institution in its own nature. The signs are bound to what they represent...objectively by the force of a divine appointment." [MP, 61].
88 ibid., 389, quoting Nevin, MP, 182.
89 Nevin, "Doctrine of the Reformed Church," 434.
90 ibid., 521.
91 ibid., 523.
92 ibid., 450.
93 ibid., 451.
94 ibid., 452.
95 ibid., 452-3.
96 ibid., 453.
97 "What Is Christianity?" BRPR 32:1 (1860) 118-161.