In 1994, George Grant got invited to speak at Covenant College at Lookout Mountain, GA and he invited me to come with him. I readily agreed because I would get to spend time with George (I worked for/with him then) and because I’d get to meet Cal Beisner again, someone I respected a great deal and had only met once or twice before (when he was visiting Coral Ridge when I worked there at CRM for George).
Anyway, to pass the time, George bought a tape player with a couple of plug-in speakers so we could listen to audiotapes of the last Biblical Horizons Conference. That was the first time I had ever heard Jeff Meyers’s voice listening to this lecture on “the Mercersberg Theology.” (I can’t remember if we had the outline or not).
That was the beginning. Later, when I was contacting CTS about attending, the student in charge of recruiting me happened to be a member of the church Jeff pastored. (Since that time, he has been Jeff’s assistant, associate, and now a church-plantier). Those lectures were fresh on my mind and I took it upon myself to tell this guy what a bright pastor he had. I was not sure I was going to attend Covenant. In fact, enquiring there was rather an afterthought. But the next thing I know Jeff has called me up (I think he had seen my name in association with World Magazine–I actually even wrote a couple of feature articles back in the first half of the nineties) and really tried to talk me into Covenant. He succeeded, in part because, at Providence, I realized one gets a great deal of pastoral attention as a seminary student. It is almost like having an training institute in addition to the seminary.
So, those lectures ended up changing the course of my life, when you think about it. And that seems appropriate because they are very good. Of course, their not quite is important as they used to be. At the time, Jeff was, as far as I can tell, the only Reformed Evangelical pastor doing anything with Mercersberg. Keith Mathison and Robert Letham (“Nevin was right and … Hodge … failed to grasp his own theological tradition”) changed that slightly. But only the Hart book gave us another study that really concentrated on what Mercersberg was about. What is good about this is that I don’t see any evidence (yet) that Hart was aware of Jeff’s work, and yet they compare rather well. I think this is good evidence that their position is what an informed Reformed Evangelical will come to think about Nevin and his value to us.
The chapter on “The Mercersburg Theology” in E. Brooks Holifield’s Theology in America (Yale Univ. Press, 2003) is also quite good and it too complements Meyer’s and Hart’s work.
Mark,
Have you seen this?
http://twoedgedsword.blogspot.com/2005/11/to-rome-or-relativism.html
pax,
Dale
That’s pretty hilarious.
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Yeah, what a hoot. Oh, and let me let you in on a secret: the mainline Presbyterian church went to hell in a handbasket because of B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, and even Machen. Maybe we should all play the post hoc ergo propter hoc game. We could come up with some real howlers, I’m sure.
In a strange reduplication of history, in 2002, I stumbled accross a website called “Theologia” and the rest is history.
Mark,
I just got that book. A friend gave it to me and I am excited about digging into it.
Justin
Of course, the UCC still claims Mercersberg as their own. Leaders of the German Reformed Church, such as Joseph Berg, Jacob Helffenstein, Benjamin Schneck and J.H.A. Bomberger (who was one of Nevin’s fiercest defenders at the beginning of the Liturgical controversy) that spoke against the Mercersberg theology proved to be correct about where it was heading. That’s hardly a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Read the late 19th Century histories of the RCUS (such as Good’s), and they almost universally conclude that Mercersberg killed the German Reformed Church. Hardly an example (and a theology) we should emulate.
Well, I’m sure standing up for the historic Christian faith against American denominationalism required a price, but as to whether they “killed” the German Reformed Church in any other way, I have my doubts. But rather than write more I’ll simply commend again Jeff Meyers work and D. G. Hart’s and let it go at that.
I just finished writing a paper on Nevin’s doctrine of the church in response to 19th century revivalism for my Church in the Modern Age class. Nevin’s German idealism is pretty wacky, but he had a lot of good thigns to say about church-centered piety when the mainstream was definitely going the other way.
Ben
Patrick you are so right! Of course anti-liturgical forces have nothing to do with flavorless drop into liberalism (ala Norman Vincent Peal, Olsteen, et. al.)? Yes, its all the fault of a high sacramental theology even though Nevin did an outstanding job of reduplicating Calvin’s, yes Calvin’s eucharistic theology.
Can’t we discuss theology like adults without taking out the giant brush and painting everybody out? After all, what harm did Hodge’s rationalism play on the liberalizing of Presbyterianism or Machen’s acidity play on the endless factionalism in the same?
Tribal history is as tribal history does.