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The Mercersburg theology was a protest against many of the ÒPuritan tendencies dominant in American religion in the mid-nineteenth century. Its spokesmen emphasized the catholic heritage in Protestantism and fostered the ecumenical hope of a reunion of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. They presented a high church sacramental conception, as opposed to the predominant revivalistic, individualistic, and sectarian habit of mind. The movement was generally disapproved as Romanizing and its popular influence was accordingly minimal. The two creative writers were John Williamson Nevin, the theologian, and Philip Schaff, the historian and liturgical scholar, who taught together at the college and seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Their books, tracts, and periodical articles had only a limited circulation and are no longer generally accessible, having been little regarded in the intervening years. The general stance of the Mercersburg men was parallel to that of the high church Lutherans of Germany and the Tractarians in the Church of England. The movement was the chief American counterpart to these developments, since the American Episcopalian disciples of the Tractarians could scarcely be compared to Nevin and Schaff in theological stature. The Americans were more philosophically oriented than the Anglo-Catholics, utilizing the concepts of Schelling and Hegel to interpret the classical doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation and to define the relation of private judgment to Church tradition. They were also mediators to America of much of the mid-nineteenth-century German theological scholarship. The Americans were also more conscious than the Tractarians of the implications for theology of the new historical consciousness prevalent in Germany. Schaff set forth the idea of the historical development in the same year as Newman's famous essay on the subject. But while the conception undercut the Tractarian position for Newman, the Mercersburg theology was built upon a parallel view. The evangelical catholicism of Mercersburg was most widely influential through the liturgy produced under Schaff's leadership, which has maintained a limited local continuity to this day.
This book explores the influences of German theology on Emanuel Gerhart and Charles Hodge, two Reformed theologians who addressed questions concerning method and atonement theology in light of modernism and new scientific theories.
Through their teaching of early Christian history and theology, Elizabeth A. Clark contends, Princeton Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, and Union Theological Seminary functioned as America's closest equivalents to graduate schools in the humanities during the nineteenth century. These four Protestant institutions, founded to train clergy, later became the cradles for the nonsectarian study of religion at secular colleges and universities. Clark, one of the world's most eminent scholars of early Christianity, explores this development in Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America. Based on voluminous archival materials, the book charts how American theologians traveled to Europe to study in Germany and confronted intellectual currents that were invigorating but potentially threatening to their faith. The Union and Yale professors in particular struggled to tame German biblical and philosophical criticism to fit American evangelical convictions. German models that encouraged a positive view of early and medieval Christianity collided with Protestant assumptions that the church had declined grievously between the Apostolic and Reformation eras. Trying to reconcile these views, the Americans came to offer some counterbalance to traditional Protestant hostility both to contemporary Roman Catholicism and to those historical periods that had been perceived as Catholic, especially the patristic era.
Knowledge of the ideas of the theologian Emanuel V. Gerhart is essential for understanding nineteenth-century American theology. Gerhart was one of the first to introduce a complete systematic Christocentric theological system to Americans. His Institutes of the Christian Religion developed the ideas of European theologians and promoted the effort to systematize Mercersburg theology. Gerhart embraced German idealism rather than Scottish philosophy in his scholarship. As a mediating theologian, he attempted to reconcile historical Christianity with modern culture. His lectures, essays, and texts addressed the religious challenges and intellectual issues of his day from a Christocentric perspective. Together they were a major contribution to the Mercersburg Movement in particular and American theology in general from the antebellum period to the progressive era. His publications were devoted to a range of disciplines that included education, philosophy, and theology. This volume portrays Gerhart's core theological ideas as found in his main texts and offers introductory commentaries and gives the historical background for his intellectual contributions.
Though his influence on American society has often been forgotten or misunderstood, John Calvin played a formative role in the traditions of almost every sector of American life. This wide-ranging study, comprising twelve essays, shows for the first time the extraordinary extent to which Calvinist thoughts and practices are woven into the fabric of American society, theology, and letters, from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. John Calvin's American Legacy examines the economics of the Colonial period, Calvin's effect on American identity, and the evidence for Calvin's influence on American democracy. The book next addresses Calvin's critical role in American theology, inspecting the relationship between Jonathan Edwards's and Calvin's church practices, the diverse views on the Calvinist theological tradition in the nineteenth century, the ways in which Calvin was understood in the historiography of Williston Walker and Perry Miller, and Calvin's influence on twentieth-century theologies. Finally, the book explores Calvinism's influence on American literature, examining the work of such writers as Samson Occom, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Max Weber, Mark Twain, John Updike, and Marilynne Robinson. This important book is the first to introduces readers to the breadth and depth of Calvin's influence along the spectrum of American thought and society, from the 18th century to modern times.
Published in 1989, this bibliography considers religious seminaries that are affiliated with the various denominations of the theological institutions established in the United States by the Protestants in the early 1800s, it also considers non-denominational and independent settings. Divided into two sections, the first short section considers the relationship between the civil governments and the seminaries, the second, organized by denomination into 15 chapters provides an extensive bibliography with annotations. The work pulls together a wealth of reference material and identifies salient works, whether book, article, dissertation or essay, to provide a much-needed resource for those interested in seminary education in the United States, whether scholar, student, policy maker, or interested citizen.
Internationally recognised for his scholarship in the philosophy of religion and Christian Doctrine, and for his ecclesiastical connections as former Theological Secretary of the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Reformed theologian Alan Sell has an established reputation amongst theologians, church and intellectual historians, ecumenists, and ministers of religion. This collection of Alan Sell's work on the Reformed and Dissenting traditions - which includes the Presbyterian, Congregational and United Reformed Church - spans key doctrinal, philosophical, ethical, historical and ecumenical topics. The author illuminates central themes within the history and thought of the Reformed and Dissenting traditions including: the catholicity of the Church and danger of sectarianism, the importance of church meeting, the centrality of the Cross in Christian thought, the need for a viable Christian apologetic. Alan Sell also includes the only modern study of Henry Grove and papers on Andrew Fuller and P. T. Forsyth, in whose work there is currently a revival of interest. With growing interest world wide in the Reformed family, which is the third largest Christian world communion, this book offers an invaluable resource.
The Mystical Presence (1846), John Williamson Nevin's magnum opus, was an attempt to combat the sectarianism and subjectivism of nineteenth-century American religion by recovering the robust sacramental and incarnational theology of the Protestant Reformation, enriched with the categories of German idealism. In it, he makes the historical case for the spiritual real presence as the authentic Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist, and explains the theological and philosophical context that render the doctrine intelligible. The 1850 article "The Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper" represents his response to his arch critic, Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, providing what is still considered a definitive historical treatment of Reformed eucharistic theology. Both texts demonstrate Nevin's immense erudition and theological creativity, contributing to our understanding not only of Reformed theology, but also of the unique milieu of nineteenth-century American religion. The present critical edition carefully preserves the original text, while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography to orient the modern reader and facilitate further scholarship. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series is an attempt to make available for the first time--in attractive, readable, and scholarly modern editions--the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multi-year project, this aims to make an important contribution to the academic community and to the broader reading public, who may at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European, Reformed and Catholic theology.
The mid-nineteenth century is a gold mine for contemporary scholars interested in American Protestant ecclesiology. There one will find the extensive writings of John Nevin who came to the notice of the theological world with The Anxious Bench, a critique of the “quackery” of Protestant revivalism. Influenced by a critical appropriation of cutting-edge contemporary German theology, he came to believe that the church was not “invisible,” but the visible manifestation of Jesus Christ’s incarnate life. Christians were to pursue unity, not in external institutional arrangements, but as unity of spiritual life. This compilation presents his theology of the catholicity of the church prior to his masterwork, The Mystical Presence, and a multifaceted, sophisticated critique of American sectarianism. This edition carefully preserves the original texts while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series presents for the first time attractive, readable, scholarly modern editions of the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multi-year project, it aims to make an important contribution to the academic community and to the broader public, who can at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European Reformed and Catholic theology.