It wasn’t Hodge or Frame that made me think of it. It was listening to Jeff’s lectures on the Mercersberg Theology again. Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin had some great things to say, but when I keep reading mantras about putting doctrine’s into their “proper scientific form” I almost feel pity for them. But this isn’t just Mercersberg. Reading the centinniel selection of Abraham Kuyper’s speeches and writings was incredibly familiar because he spoke in the same Hegelian modern context as them.

It was thinking again about Kuyper’s similar manner of speech to Nevin and Schaff that reminded me of Frame’s off-hand remark about the Dutch Reformed obsession with proper “place” within an encyclopedia.

What strikes me as ironic is that Nevin and Schaff both wanted to communicate with a general audience. Yet they had this inherently elitist academic notion about theology. Of course, not all elittism is bad. But then, even valid elites are constantly tempted to use their advantage to gain some invalid leverage over the common lot. It needs to be watched. When Nevin complained that Calvin had not put his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in its “proper scientific form,” he offered what I found to be some extremely helpful analogies for how to understand our participation in the actual humanity of Christ without needing physical particles.

But it wasn’t science. It was simply an analogy about an acorn growing into an oak tree. It didn’t need to be called “science” as if that was some sort of inherently superior form of speech.  Frankly, I found it easier to compare to science fiction.