The Mercersburg Theology has long been viewed as a plausible middle way between Reformed Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The remarkable and fruitful partnership of theologian John Williamson Nevin and historian Phillip Schaff at tiny Mercersburg Seminary in the hills of South Central Pennsylvania has inspired a volume of literature and theological reflection that far exceeds the apparent importance of the school or its faculty of two. In his recent contribution, W. Bradford Littlejohn seeks to “do justice both to the Reformed center of Nevin and Schaff's thought as well as to the full catholicity of Nevin and Schaff's thought” (10).
To make his case, Littlejohn positions his interpretation between two earlier treatments, Darryl Hart's John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2005), and Richard E. Wentz's John Williamson Nevin: American Theologian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). According to Littlejohn, as a defender and champion of Charles Hodge, Hart errs by stressing Nevin's Reformed side, albeit in Hodge's view a distorted understanding of the Reformed tradition. At the other extreme, Wentz presents a postmodern portrait of Nevin that positions the Mercersburg Theologian as a harbinger of liberalism and universalism. According to Littlejohn, this equals “a sad distortion of the historical Nevin” (9). The truth is somewhere in between: “I would not go so far as Darryl Hart in claiming that Nevin's main concern was to be Reformed; nor would I embrace Wentz's conclusion that he is only interested in being catholic” (182).
Littlejohn argues that James Hastings Nichols is closer to correct in his Romanticism in American Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), though Nichols failed to deal fully and fairly with Nevin's opponents, especially Hodge.
Littlejohn takes us on a fascinating tour of nineteenth- and twentieth-century movements that he places in dialogue with Mercersburg. Most of them were in actual conversation (or argument) with Nevin and Schaff. Through a later movement, the nouvelle théologie, Littlejohn explores what the dialogue might have been with Nevin and Schaff, or could be with their twenty-first-century followers.
Having situated his argument between the poles of Hart and Wentz, Littlejohn gives a brief sketch of the Mercersburg Theology and its general place in nineteenth-century theological development. He then describes Mercersburg's interaction with its most formidable opponent and interpreter of the Reformed tradition, Princeton Theological Seminary's Charles Hodge. Hodge, the champion of Reformed orthodoxy, responded first to Schaff on church history, then to Nevin on the mystical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Littlejohn describes the conflict of paradigms between Princeton and Mercersburg, with Hodge championing a more empirical scientific method, and Nevin and Schaff a more mystical approach. At the root of the disagreement was ecclesiology and opposing understandings of the visible and the invisible church. Hodge's “recurring dualism and nominalism,” Littlejohn argues, “forces him to separate the visible church from the invisible” (87). The Mercersburg theologians, in contrast, with their emphasis on the Incarnation as the foundation and revelation of the character of the church, saw the development of the visible church as a true reflection of the invisible.
Less prominent in the American context were the conversation partners of the Oxford Movement in England. While Nevin and Schaff have much in common with the emphases of the “Dons across the Pond,” Littlejohn maintains that while both found their foundation in the early church, the Mercersburg theologians also saw in that foundation marching orders for moving into the future. “Where Mercersburg looked back to gain clearer sight for the forward march, the Oxford men looked backward and stayed that way. This fundamental orientation was ultimately an eschatological orientation; Keble, Newman, and Pusey are full of Stoic resolution to hold firm the course through this transient, troubled world, to come at last to heavenly bliss, while Nevin and Schaff are full of buoyant optimism that the Church will triumph over and transform this transient troubled world” (121).
A more difficult and perhaps less fruitful comparison is the chapter on the Mercersburg and Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite their “remarkably similar theological vision,” there simply was not much interaction between Nevin and Schaff and Orthodox writers. Even the unusually irenic Schaff could speak of the Eastern Church as in a “state of putrefaction” presenting to the world “the spectacle of a praying corpse” (127). This statement came early in the historian's career, but a relative lack of interaction with Orthodox theologians throughout his life provided little to alter this attitude. Littlejohn hopes, however, that his brief survey of similar ideas will be “very significant toward establishing a basis for dialogue and making common cause” (146).
Perhaps the most fascinating and innovative chapter deals with the possibilities of dialogue between the heirs of Mercersburg and the nouvelle théologie. Littlejohn argues that “the theological agenda which de Lubac advanced resonated deeply with that of Mercersburg.” Common elements included: “a decisive turn back to patristic sources, an emphasis on the inherently social character of the Church, as opposed to the modern conception which sees it as a mere collection of individuals, a call to hold visible and invisible together as two aspects of a single church, with an appeal to the hypostatic union as the foundation of this unity, a focus on the Eucharist as that which constitutes the Church, and an attempt to describe the Church as a supernatural body that fulfills nature, rather than a supernature alongside or against nature” (148–49). With nouvelle théologie gaining a renewed hearing in recent days (see, for example, Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009]), dialogue with the ideas of the Mercersburg theologians may indeed be a fruitful area for study.
The final chapter on “lessons from Mercersburg” recaps some of the arguments made in the beginning about the divisions between the Princeton understanding of being Reformed and that of Mercersburg, particularly Nevin's. Littlejohn takes the gloves off and asserts that taking Mercersburg seriously “may hold a mirror up to Reformed churches today, forcing them to ask whether they are really heirs of the Reformation, and of the historic Church, or of some version of the ‘modern Puritanism’ which preaches scarcely the same Gospel.” He continues, “By exposing the presuppositions of Hodge's system of doctrine, Mercersburg may show many how their ‘Reformed’ doctrine is more a product of the Enlightenment than the Bible or the Reformation” (170).
While raising some interesting possibilities and bringing the ideas of Nevin and Schaff to the attention of a new generation of readers, the book has some flaws. The author relies heavily on a handful of primary sources. In the case of Schaff, they are from very early in the historian's career and do not take into account later developments in his thought. Schaff's later work is dismissed as “proto-liberalistic ecumenism” (180), hardly an accurate or nuanced interpretation of the final thirty-five years of his career or even the second decade of his work at Mercersburg. With the exception of Hart, Wentz, and Nichols, Littlejohn fails even to mention (or include in his bibliography) other important secondary works that would have been useful and helped flesh out his interpretation. Most glaringly missing are writings of Klaus Penzel, the most important interpreter of Schaff's German background and intellectual development. Littlejohn also ignores articles and collections of essays about Nevin.
Despite these flaws, this book is a welcome contribution to the Mercersburg literature that should provoke important reflections and discussions about some of Mercersburg's key themes and how the movement relates to a number of other movements. Littlejohn is to be commended for his close analysis of important writings by the Mercersburg theologians and his creative use of dialogue, real and possible, as a framework for his study.
