Announcing the Mystical Presence

I am proud to announce that at last, the first volume of the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, which I am editing, John Williamson Nevin's The Mystical Presence and the Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper (ed. Linden J. DeBie, foreword by Mark Noll), has now been published and is available to order.  

Encompassing the most comprehensive and (I hope) most reader-friendly edition of The Mystical Presence to date, and the first edition of the extraordinary essay "The Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper" in forty-five years, this "handsome new edition . . . deserves to be studied and savored by pastors and scholars alike" (George Hunsinger).  Indeed, this volume promises to be a valuable contribution to studies not merely of Mercersburg and nineteenth-century American theology, but of Reformed eucharistic theology more broadly, as Nevin's study of the subject remains a classic after 150 years.  

(Tune in to Trinity Talk next week for an interview with me about my work on Mercersburg and this new volume)

The importance of this text, and of the new critical edition, have been hailed by prominent historians and theologians.  Mark Noll, author of America's God, says in the foreword, 

“This is the first volume of what the organizers of this series plan as an extended edition of the works of John W. Nevin, of his colleagues at the Mercersburg Seminary in the 1840s and 1850s, and of some who in those same years objected to Mercersburg views.  For a clearer picture of the United States’ unduly neglected theological history of the period—as well as a most welcome stimulus to theological reflection in our own day–the edition is a godsend. . . .

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"No Where Severed": The Problem of Ubiquity (Hooker's Christology, Pt. 4)

Having established the personal identity between the eternal Word and the man Christ Jesus, the complete distinction and unimpaired integrity of the two natures, and the sense in which Christ’s humanity is glorified by its union with the Word, Hooker turns in chapter 55 of Book V to expound much more carefully the hotly-disputed question of ubiquity, which had driven a rift between the Lutheran and Reformed churches, a very serious rift indeed, touching as it did the crucial mystery of the Christian faith.  

Hooker, while operating within a basically Reformed Christology, seeks to articulate the question of ubiquity in a way that does as much justice as possible to the things the Lutherans wanted to emphasize.  This is quite a delicate theological operation, and it’s worth looking closely at how Hooker conducts it.

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"Eat and Live"--A Tribute to Richard Hooker

Just yesterday I finally concluded a glorious two-month journey through the 1400 pages of Richard Hooker's incomparable Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, as much a life-changing experience as any [human] book can provide.  Although I have been scattering testimonies to Hooker's brilliance through this blog all along the way, thought it appropriate to mark the occasion by posting a beautiful testimony to Hooker's eloquence and irenicism, an excerpt from his stunning section on the Eucharist, where he pleads for us to glory in the mystery of the Real Presence, rather than disputing endlessly of its mechanism:

“Hee which hath said of the one sacrament Wash and be cleane, hath said concerninge the other likewise Eat and live.  If therefore without any such particular and solemne warrant as this is, that poor distressed woman comminge unto Christ for health could so constantlie resolve hir selfe, May I but touch the skirt of his garment I shalbe whole, what moveth us to argue of the maner how life should come by bread, our dutie being here but to take what is offered, and most assuredly to rest perswaded of this, that can wee but eate wee are safe?  When I behold with mine eyes some smale and scarce discerneable graine or seed whereof nature maketh promise that a tree shall come; and when afterwards of that tree any skillfull artificer undertaketh to frame some exquisite and curious worke, I looke for the event, I move no question about performance either of the one or of the other.  Shall I simplie credit nature in thinges naturall, shall I in thinges artificiall relie my selfe on art, never offeringe to make doubt, and in that which is above both arte and nature refuse to believe the author of both, except he acquaint me with his waies, and lay the secret of his skill before me?

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A Primer on Christian Economics

I almost forgot to post this--part two of my "Christianity and Public Issues" talk (see Part 1 here).  

Economics is perhaps the greatest issue on the political radar, particularly in the past couple years.  How should we as Christians approach economics and political economy?  Well, let’s return again to the passage from Philippians 3.  Paul contrasts us, the citizens of heaven, with those “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things”--those who pursue desires of self-gratification, who seek to glorify themselves by how much more they can amass than others, those whose focus and chief goal is material prosperity.  It is not hard to see that this is the way that most of the world lives today--not just individuals, but corporations and governments.  How do companies in our world measure their success?  By how many people’s lives are enriched by their efforts or by how wide their profit margins are?  How do most governments measure their success?  By how much they have promoted justice or by how much GDP growth they can create?  Materialism and selfishness are nothing new, of course, but today Christians must confront the danger of an ideology that argues that selfishness is actually the best way to help people.  The premise of modern capitalism is that as long as you let people pursue their self-interest and remove any barriers to their satisfaction of their material desires, then peace, prosperity, and freedom will grow for everyone.  Paul here and almost any book of Scripture could warn us against the danger of this mindset, could remind us of what a treacherous tool wealth is, how easily it shifts from being a means to a good end to being an end in itself, could remind us that no society can succeed which puts individual self-interest above regard for others.  

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