Review of The German Roots of Nineteenth-Century American Theology by Annette Aubert.
Linden DeBie
An old controversy is resurrected with new insight in Annette Aubert’s The German Roots of Nineteenth-Century American Theology. If knowledge leans toward a subject’s breadth and understanding toward its depth, then it is to our understanding that this book so eloquently speaks. Not that Dr. Aubert hasn’t increased our knowledge of nineteenth-century mediating philosophy and theology. In fact, the field has been so neglected that any new work here is welcome. But the real gift of German Roots is for our understanding of the mediating theologians “on their own terms.” She accomplishes the task in two ways. First, is her application of Trans-Atlantic Theology. Dr. Aubert leaves little room for provincialisms which she contrasts in her early sections on “narrow” and “broad” intellectual perspectives. For an example of her adjustment to the “narrow” approach, we read that when Garry Dorrien found only a “small” and “late” impact of German theology on American religion, he is otherwise informed. It is as if he missed entirely the dramatic influence of Halle and the Pietist movement on early American theology even before 1725. Halle’s influence was in fact early and deep, and a major source of American New Light sentiment. Indeed, so profound was this influence that Justus Heinrich Christian Helmuth, a Halle educated Pietist, would become pastor of the largest German speaking Lutheran church in Philadelphia soon after the Revolutionary War. Such influence was equally dramatic among the Dutch Reformed, whose leading Pietist pastor, Theodorus Frelinghuysen, who more than anyone led the denomination in a New Light direction and away from the overweening influence of the mother church (Classis of Amsterdam), was educated in Germany under the Pietist Wilhelmius at Lingen University. And of course the Wesley’s debt to Halle and the Moravian movement was enormous. Moreover German influence was substantial throughout the nineteenth century, and Dr. Aubert shows us how.
Avoiding clichés about the necessity for “global thinking,” it stands to reason that a scholar fluent in German and English and educated in Germany and the U.S. might add considerable breadth to our understanding of cultural exchange. But perhaps even more important, is the heightened sensitivity of a refined, post-modern mind attuned to the porous, diffuseness of human cultural interaction. She sees better than many how religious communities are deconstructed and reshaped; how there are lively give-and-take interactions going on even in communities resistant to change. The book shows us how Princeton Seminary is a case in point!
The second way Dr. Aubert gets to that deeper understanding is via her historical method. Borrowing insights from historians Richard Evans and Brad S. Gregory, along with the gifted historian Mark Noll who provided helpful comments, she seeks to consider the German influence on American religion from within the nineteenth century. Interestingly, it was very much like the approach to history taken by John W. Nevin, one of the book’s central figures, in his analysis of sixteenth-century Reformed sacramental theology. Nevin was in many ways a product of German mediating thought. At the same time, we sense no antagonism with the putative historical conclusions that have pitted the nineteenth-century theological systems against each other. Ostensibly this is confirmed by the combatants’ own recriminations. Such is frankly acknowledged in the book, while the extraordinary amount of sharing and exchange is likewise incorporated into the so-called “broader intellectual perspective,” even as the theologians themselves remained on edge. The result is a fresh reading of the controversies and the systems themselves. Nor does one get the feeling that she seeks to supersede the more narrow conclusions, but rather with the same determination that a new generation overcomes the impasse of its elders, she lets the controversies lie so as to forge a new direction.
This was central to the ease with which the hostile systems’ incongruities were overcome. Certainly, it was important to ferret out the sticking points and note how the systems held the theologians captive to their notion of universal conclusions, such that they served a great presupposition: where there are two opposing views, one must be wrong, oh and by the way, very likely dangerous. But a false step might be derived from such narrowness: ergo, there was nothing of meditaing thought that could be found in Hodge, and all that Nevin and Gerhart had of Scottish Realism had long ago been eschewed. By no means! Nor will Dr. Aubert be distracted by the theologians’ invective. The war-like language was left aside again as easily as a new generation does not feel compelled to reengage in combat. We are then free to not take sides and so sharpen our sensitivity and lean toward the synergistic power of ideas, respecting at the same time the distinctive claims of the warring systems. Thus Dr. Aubert can appreciate the fecundity of multicultural exchange without rancor or innocence.
A personal favorite example of mine is her juxtaposition of the classic loci method which the traditionalist Hodge revered and the new, Liberal Theology’s “central dogma” approach preferred by Nevin and Gerhart. We look forward to Dr. Aubert’s deeper contrast of these methodologies by way of the Trans-Atlantic Theology in future works, as the current book could only provide an overview. What is clear however, is that notwithstanding Hodge’s suspicion of the central dogma approach, he shared with it the era’s most powerful “scientific” weapon. Hodge’s approach was not simply a duplication of the old Reformed central loci method. He employed his own brand of Enlightenment science, a good deal of it German, with regard to hermeneutics. It was to a large extent German research that provided him his “object of analysis”—the critical edition of the Bible! Indeed his empirical philosophy required just such an object. Likewise it was German philology that to a great extent provided the “data” of his biblical theology (for his commentaries, for example) and hence his Systematic Theology; a system he believed was derived directly from the Bible.
Supported by these two central features of her work, we gain a far deeper understanding of the mediating thought (Vermittlungstheology) as it translates to America and we discover that when we ask, what was being “mediated?” the answer depends on which theologian or philosopher we are considering. There was enormous “continuity and discontinuity” among them and so to the term itself. Consequently, the term must remain a bit vague and certainly flexible. In continuity the mediators all represent a bridge between the new Liberal Theology and evangelical orthodoxy, but the bridge is very broad indeed. In discontinuity we find that some mediators were latitudinarians, others heterodox and still others committed churchmen. So the mediation might be with orthodoxy and heterodoxy, or it might be with the methods of biblical criticism and historical idealism, or with rationalism and Pietism, or the more complex disagreement between Schleiermacher and Strauss. It might even be a description of a new system, in supposed advance over Schleiermacher and descriptive of the very goal of religion which was the union (mediation) of God and mankind. But in summary, the point of “mediation” was to solve the host of problems raised in the wake of Liberal Theology’s more orthodox response to rationalism.
In the face of this often confusing material, Dr. Aubert gives us a clear, general overview which again becomes essential for that breadth of understanding previously described. But as a general overview much more can be anticipated. Each philosopher and theologian deserves separate treatment. That would help provide that “broad” description of the variety of viewpoints and their proponents, as well as raising important questions about an obscure movement that might otherwise be thought to have devolved into a cacophony of arbitrary voices and a cul-de-sac of theological dead ends. What must surface, if there is to be academic justice done to the mediators and their movement, is an answer to our question: “What might all this mean for us today, in terms of post-modern theology?” What we might hope for, as Dr. Aubert develops the Trans-Atlantic method, is the unique contribution of this school; how it was not merely a compromise between disparate and ultimately sterile philosophical and theological factions, but an entirely new theological framework, one which anticipated the revival of the Church question, of Christology and of historical realism (neo-realism, as in the work of N.T. Wright) ) for the post-modern Church in a secular age—yet a framework that was fully conversant with biblical criticism; a movement attuned to theology from the bottom up, but one unwilling to bow to the power of excessive revivalist subjectivism. Surely we see some of that in the later Schelling: the remnants of this broken enterprise and his failed attempt to reconstruct from it a new metaphysics. But even today scholars such as the brilliant Andrew Bowie are digging through the rubble and discovering that many of the questions have not gone away and that some leads might be found that will prove valuable as we struggle over whether we should even bother to seek a foundation upon which a metaphysical system could once again guide the Church. But just as important, without this foundation, what are we to do about the miserable state of ethics in our world today?
Of course, it is when Dr. Aubert turns to Emmanuel Gerhardt that her analysis goes considerably deeper. She seeks to compare Gerhart with perhaps the reigning Protestant theologian in America at the time, Charles Hodge. Again, we see the trajectory and its appeal to post-modernism: questions of continuity and discontinuity must adjust our supercessionist presuppositions and provide insight into historical steps and missteps amidst cultural change. This of course, will be within the confines of theology and expressly within the important question of atonement theory. Still it is a significant chapter in theology in general and indeed theology in the nineteenth century that remains informative today in spite of the spread of supercessionist amnesia.
Gerhart is most remarkable in that he was one of the first in America to address the same issues as the German mediators within their idiom, and the first to do so by producing a magisterial system of theology. Likewise, with this he adopted the central dogma method. But his emphasis was slightly adjusted from an emphasis on the Incarnation of Christ—to a focus on the person of Christ. Still, Christology was its controlling principle, and like Philip Schaff, who came shortly after his graduation from the seminary, but whom he quoted extensively, he wrote a Prolegomena. Both were very much in the style of Schleiermacher’s earlier outline of theology, and designed to move theological study in a new direction, a direction that he believed better suited the modern era. Thus “When Mercersburg looked for a different approach to theology they turned to the writings of German theologians.” Generally true, still taken too simply it will be misleading.
Yes, it is true, John Nevin left his Puritan theology, and it was to the mediating school that he was drawn, fundamentally by way of August Neander. But this was earlier, while he was at Pittsburgh Seminary and years before he was called to the seminary in Mercersburg. Likewise, Nevin’s predecessor, Frederick Rauch, was a disciple of Karl Daub and a philosopher in the style of Hegel. But as with many of the “young Hegelians of the right,” Rauch did his theology in the style of the mediating school. As for Schaff, his theology was simply German Idealism, deeply informed by his enormously popular and influential teacher, August Tholuck, who also was an emblem of the Mediating Theology. Finally, the German Reformed had by no means forgotten their German theology. The first president of the seminary, Lewis Mayer, was devoted to the theology of DeWette—whose rationalistic bent led some to suspect that Mayer was himself a recalcitrant rationalist.
As for Nevin, like his friend and future adversary Charles Hodge, he had read the German rationalists with early admiration (not so much admiration in the case of Hodge, although he read them, studied with several of them and had long, fruitful personal relationships with them and a life-long correspondence), long before. But it was their biblical science—their skill in ancient language, exegesis, and hermeneutics that most influenced him. He gained tremendous insights from their science, as Aubert capably shows. Still, it is simply the case, that the two other founders of Mercersburg theology, Frederick Rauch and Philip Schaff, came to America fully ensconced within this theological culture. Likewise, the next generation Mercersburg scholars were immersed in the same milieu both at Marshall College and the German Reformed seminary. And it should not be surprising that the insights provided by the mediating thought would be welcomed by the German Reformed Church (not without controversy) but poorly received elsewhere, eventually finding a select hearing among academics such as Henry Boynton Smith at Union Seminary, once a student in Germany.
But why make Christ the principia theologiae? It was after all, a logical conclusion in reaction to a century of rationalist doubt about the orthodox biblical doctrines and the contents of faith. With the Bible demythologized or rather reduced to myth, with its alleged errors and contradictions exposed and more importantly, in the wake of Strauss, with its inner logic revealed—faced with the two alternatives of gross skepticism or a positive reevaluation and reconstruction of religion (albeit Promethean), many idealistic thinking German scholars chose the latter, such as previously did Hegel and Schleiermacher, along with their more orthodox students. But even among their students, new schools emerged which moved in the opposite direction. Bauer, Feuerbach, and Marx would go the opposite way and depict religion in utterly human terms. Nevertheless, with few exceptions the view was that in the face of the findings of modern biblical science, a new foundation needed to be “discovered” or established, one that did not rest on tradition alone. Tradition had been torn asunder and criticized along with the early Church and her alleged “late” fantasies about the Christ of history. But the speculative philosophers and theologians (Schleiermacher rejected the idea that he was a speculative theologian and preferred to be called a dogmatician, but his methods are in many ways similar) insisted that faith rested neither on Scripture nor anything abstract. Scripture reliably (or not so reliably depending on the mediator) revealed the historical faith as it culminated in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Nevertheless, faith rested not on the Bible, but on the living person of Christ; a reality not liable to exegetical criticism—nor subject to skepticism and rationalist doubt.
We see here the enormous influence of Schleiermacher and his positive, subjective approach—one that led to a century of remonstrance by Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic theologians alike. Yet the power of subjective religion, as it germinated in earlier pietism, found popular expression in revivalism and flourished in both Unitarian humanism and the transcendental humanism of American romanticism, was a genie let out of the bottle never to return. Not at least until now. Not until the rising critique of post-modern liberal theology and the culture of individualism so prevalent today. Now we see the cracks in this Enlightenment edifice as much a result of the Reformation as of Renaissance and Enlightenment science.
Of course modern idealism’s conceived of methodological dialectic was supposed to hold subject and object in perfect balance (another variation on the term mediation). We need not call forth the ghost of Barth to put that in question. Dialectics are hardly perspicuous and notorious for not matching history’s quirkiness. Of course, in reality history becomes surprisingly (frighteningly) clear. But as dialectical theory, the antithesis is never so obvious as to become predictable, and it certainly has no inner logic making it conform to the “ought to be” we might like or say we can anticipate, except in its most artificial or theoretical form. This in fact, was more in the style of the early Schelling than it was Hegel in his departure from his former collaborator. The orthodox appreciation but caution to speculative philosophy, was that which forms and informs the dialectical process, if there is anything at all except God in God’s utter otherness, remains elusive in its anonymity. But this may be an unfair criticism of Hegel. While Nevin and several other mediators believed Hegel had his system “mistress of the facts,” Hegel’s system, complex as it is, was essentially negative science-more effective at disproving than proving conclusions. This is evident in his devastating attack on Kant, on Fichte, and in some measure the reason Schelling took another philosophical course. And to say he subscribed to a deterministic idea of history, such that history is in any way predictable, is simply false. Yes, like Einstein, he was convinced that God does not play dice with the universe. Just as much as Einstein believe that cosmic phenomenon was not the product of chance, Hegel was convinced that historical phenomenon could be logically considered, and that an utterly rational causation was at work in history. But how that happened or what would happen, he was adamant: this could not be determined. What he did say, convinced the mediators of his heterodoxy (most mediators did not believe he was a heretic), and that his philosophy (not his theology), was essentially Christian although perhaps tainted with pantheism.
But what of Scripture now that this edifice of Protestant authority was so buffeted by the modern age? Well, that was very much on the minds of the mediators, and mediation would serve to reconcile church dogma and biblical criticism. Here again, the question is raised, but what is the character of Liberal Theology’s so-called subjectivism? To get at that we need to move from the perceived crisis which centered on the veracity of Scripture. As it was, Scripture could no longer be the source or guiding principle of theology. Christ as person, hence Christology, must supplant Scripture in that regard. Yet Scripture was held to be essentially reliable. No serious rupture with tradition need result from this new approach, as the principle of Christ was at the heart of the Apostles’ Creed and the Trinitarian faith. Thus we add to our list of variations on the theme of “mediation,” the very person of “the mediator, Jesus Christ.” But how might this Christocentrism ultimately be branded as a great “subjectivizing tendency”?
Dr. Aubert is clear to point out that Gerhardt, with his Christocentrism, with his focus on both the human and divine Christ, with his preference for organic metaphors over mechanical ones, with his reliance on experience, with his preference for the Gospel of John, with his focus on the reunion of God with humankind, with his depiction of Christ as archetype, with his romantic push-back from the priority of reason for all aspects of life and faith; with all of these key principles, still with all this, Gerhardt is not entirely innovative in these respects. Gerhardt had inherited the mediating agenda directly from his teachers at Mercersburg and by his close study of the German mediating theologians, especially Dorner and Martenson. His was a systematic genius. He was adept at synthesizing what he had learned and organizing it to address the perceived needs of his American audience. But as expected, he would also inherit the wrath of the critics of this approach. And so, like Schleiermacher and his students, it was the doctrine of “Christ consciousness” that made him controversial in the way of the great Berlin preacher. Indeed, the taint of Schleiermacher had earlier poisoned relations with Princeton, and Hodge never tired of calling Schleiermacher and his followers, “pantheists and mystics.”
But the objective of the mediators was that the putative errors or excesses of Schleiermacher were to be “mediated,” that is corrected by an orthodox adjustment of his system. That might include adopting speculative philosophy and Hegel’s historical methodology while eschewing both Schleiermacher and Hegel’s views of, for example, sin and the Devil, which they believed both men failed to take seriously. For many mediators, such as the American Nevin, it required a historical Christ consistent with the biblical narratives who was fully God in every respect as much as being fully human, and not merely a human Christ whose consciousness was that of God. Whether this criticism is fair or not, Nevin is not entirely clear about. He did say he wants the Christ of the Church rather than a Christ derived from subjective experience and thus given for the Church. However, this may not be a just criticism of Schleiermacher.
With the mediator Dorner, Gerhardt likewise adjusted Schleiermacher’s connection between Christ and believer by shifting the emphasis from a subjective consciousness to the objective God. While one might sense or feel utterly dependent in this world, it is not the feeling that grasps its object in faith, but Christ as objective reality that gives himself over to the subject who in faith is receptive. Christ, not the believer, is the source of faith. This would be critical for the entire foundation of Mercersburg theology, as Gerhardt’s teachers, Rauch and Nevin, would pound home to their students. It was the central tenant of an objective, supernatural reality which broke into history at the Incarnation! But the Mercersburg professors were simply content to call it practical theology.
Even the concept of theology as a system grated against this living presence which organically connected with all of life; no mechanistic laws could impose on divine and human freedom as they were expressed in the deep mystery of a cosmic love story. In spite of that romantic freedom, history was by no means utterly contingent. The Bible certainly didn’t say that, nor did Augustine and Calvin. Nor could it be in this age of reason that the movement of Geist was arbitrary. For the mediators who were clearly under the metaphysical spell of Schelling, each successive phase of history unfolded directly and deterministically from the prior phase (Gerhart called them eons), as driven by an unseen and irrevocable force, just as a teleological force within the acorn drives it to become the oak. History was unfolding in like manner according to its inner blueprint: the logic of necessity. The influence of burgeoning botany was obvious—but “vitalism” as it was called, was yet unaware of DNA.
Likewise then the Church, with its principle of the God/man Christ, moved with necessity on its inevitable course toward the visionary Church of St. John: the Church of perfect love. But of course there was no sign of such progress other than a truncated pattern provided by hindsight. Nor was there any chance of real predictability in these phases. While it certainly appeared as if the choices and conditions of each succeeding generation, by virtue of the consequences of their actions; by the convictions they espoused; by the very institutions they built based on these convictions and choices, led directly to their current state such that it was possible to see how they got where they were—still no convincing evidence could be found that they had to make those choices; that they had to have those convictions. Thus given different choices, different convictions; given the persuasion of different desires, an entirely different outcome or future was possible. Today most doubt a historical teleologically driven and deterministic spirit: the ghost in the machine of history that drives it along on its inevitable course. Nevin in his later years grew more dismal about this brand of idealism’s optimism, although he never entirely abandoned it.
This would ultimately shake apart the foundations of Mercersburg philosophy and for that matter, the Hegelian inspired theory of historical development and Liberal Theology in general. Not that we doubt the development of history and with it the way doctrines and confessions and even the Bible likewise develop and thus change through history. We see that clearly enough. What is however suspect, is the notion that Church doctrine like history, is evolving along some preconceived, inevitable course set for it by a recognizable providence, such that each historical epoch finds itself at a higher theological plane and thus closer to the great consummation. The horror is suggested by the idea that we are in any way the source of the Church’s reconciliation, robbing the Holy Spirit of her freedom, attributing far too much credit to humankind, leading thus to similar conclusions of Bauer where the Church is usurped by the state as the state takes its place as the true guide of society’s progress. And of course, progress was what was desired. Progress was the new Baal of Enlightenment culture. The Church would come to serve the interests of the state, such that progress might take us to our new, higher synthesis.
At the surface, it merely appeared that the Bible was being understood better, but indeed the development of doctrine meant more than that. Ostensibly thorny problems such as predestination and freewill could be solved by recognizing their complimentary relationship. Both ideas are found in Scripture, and both are born out in human experience. God acts freely and humankind is determined by inescapable laws. Yet freedom and necessity exist even within the godhead, as much as humankind is free within the scope of divine law. However, the great hurdle that was forcefully overcome by the mediators was the categorical rejection of decretal theology. In no way, neither by logic nor by scripture, can God be made the author of sin. God simply foreknows the evil mankind will freely choose.
But while that brought some closure for many to the old paradox, a great assumption lay at the heart of the solution. What if Christology cannot be “established” as the guiding principle of theology and that the reunion of God and humankind is not the very reason for religion and the reason Christianity must be “found” to be the one true religion? At the end of the day, their metaphysics was questionable as its dependence on an established premise, the centrality of the Incarnation, cannot be proven in an age rife with empirical aspirations.
For the American situation some of the most vexing questions were more regional. With the popularity of American revivalism came an old, never fully resolved, dilemma. As much as Edwards and Whitefield would remain faithful to their modified Calvinism, the Wesleys’ would not; not at the expense of human free will. Several attempts to resolve the problem, called the “Modern Question,” had met with great popular success as for example with the publication of Matthias Maurice’s, A Modern Question Modestly Answered (1737). But this was not a debate easily concluded. Later Gerhardt would seek to “mediate” the question by way of his Christ principle. But when a door closes another opens. The Christ principle continued to arouse accusations of pantheism. A crass pantheism such as we have with Spinoza cannot reasonably be attributed to Schleiermacher and even less so with the mediators. But it is reasonable to believe that there is a type of pantheism stirring about. As Dr. Aubert ably shows, Gerhardt, citing Augustine, rejected Calvin’s finitum non capax infiniti—holding that there is a “reciprocal fitness” between the infinite essence of God and finite human beings. Gerhardt maintained that that was proven by the fact that the Son of God is the image of the invisible God, and humankind is the image of God’s only begotten Son. From there Gerhardt extrapolated Christ as human archetype.
But how might such a proposal not conflict with the Christological pronouncements of the great ecumenical counsels? Dorner provided Gerhardt with his answer. Greek philosophy, the context of early Church debates, had obscured rather than clarified the dilemma of Christ’s two “natures.” Tasked with answering how this being could be both human and divine—the Church Fathers employed a Platonically inspired metaphysics. Categories of substance and essence only led to unbiblical dualism. While it is reasonable to say that Jesus had two natures, divine and human, it was not reasonable to say he was two persons. Unquestionably the unity of his personality was essential and so we recognize his divinity not by way of metaphysics, but in ethical terms: by what he said and did—his personality. Dr. Aubert says Gerhardt was the first American to propose this shift. That might be so as far as was published in his Institutes. But Nevin had made the same argument much earlier, so there’s little doubt that Gerhart brought his teachers ideas into doctrinal form.
Of course, by this time most everything needed to appeal to science to have validity. The growing departmentalization of the colleges and universities is testament to the scientific specialization that would come to dominate the academy. And the idealistic fuel that drove this trend was Wissenschaft; the dream of limitless “development” as a species. But the methods of science were applied differently, as we will see when Dr. Aubert contrasts Gerhardt with the scientific theology of Hodge. Expectedly then, Gerhardt exhibited distance from the celebrated Francis Bacon and his admirers, which he considered too rationalistic in his religious pronouncements. The compelling science of induction assumed a power it did not have: to conclude by logical demonstration the truth of the atonement. Once again in a deft attempt at mediation, Gerhard would affirm, in principal, the Anselmic theory of satisfaction. On the other hand, he also dismissed the earlier German idealists’ rejection of the same. Here against Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kant, and others who found such ideas irrational in any literal and historical sense, Gerhardt accepted that God was justifiably angry with us and for his honor and justice, required satisfaction. Furthermore, that wrath could be assuaged by way of expiation through an utterly sinless man.
It becomes clear here why Dr. Aubert need not pit Gerhardt against Hodge. Their conservative bent is clear, even while they might fight bitterly over issues, for example, of human psychology and epistemology. But when it came to the newest darling of literary science, philology, Hodge was equally adept at benefitting from what the new research brought to light. (Hodge was dead when Gerhardt published his Institutes.) Thus she makes a good deal about Hodge’s brief if intense study in Germany. While ostensibly he went to beef up his woefully inadequate knowledge of biblical languages (his student Nevin was the better Hebrew scholar), he was in constant debate with the Germans over the claims of neology. So much so that Princeton feared he might “breathe the poison air of neology,” which was exactly what his mentor and friend Archibald Alexander warned him against. And Dr. Aubert is right that against the hope that Hodge return to America untainted, he was nevertheless changed, but not in any fundamental way. He had long before come to appreciate German science. What he gained in Germany more than anything else and this was important for the future leader of Princeton Seminary, was an appreciation of their schools—the extraordinary genius of their gymnasiums and academies of science. (However, he observed that the young men had little in the way of “good old American common sense.”) Still, for their philosophy he had only perplexity and contempt. Ironically, among these philosophically minded, evangelical pastors and teachers he found such deep and abiding love and friendship that upon his departure he “wept like a baby.” Indeed, the German mediating star, Tholuck, was his companion, guide, and confident during his sojourn, and Hodge returned as much providing Tholuck the greatest succor when he was under attack by the Hegelians. But of his “pantheism,” Hodge could only shake his head and wonder. Later he begged Tholuck to leave the politically volatile Continent and come to freedom-loving America. Equally though, he sought for his friend shelter from the “vagaries” of German philosophy.
Certainly of all the new problems under consideration by the mediators, the question of the atonement was prominent. By the nineteenth century the whole edifice of Reformed or Calvinistic theology, which had become the Protestant home of earlier Anselmic satisfaction theories of the atonement, was under attack most notably beginning with the eighteenth century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius. He was followed by a parade of dissenting voices, some harsh, some merely seeking to adjust the federal theology of scholastic Calvinism. Gerhardt was committed to a new theory based on his understanding of life as an organic unity. Indeed, that theory critiqued the old forensic and moral arguments, and borrowing from several sources—most especially the Second Adam theology he borrowed from Sartorius and Olshausen, viewed redemption in terms of unity with Christ. All that God had intended for mankind from the beginning which had been spoiled by sin; all that had been lost by the First Adam, was made available again in the incarnation of Christ as the Second Adam. Of course, that implied a somewhat controversial but not unheard of position: that the First Adam was not created perfect. But that meant that Gerhardt, like his teachers, would be branded with the stigma of pantheism. Dr. Aubert adroitly comments that Gerhardt followed Hegel saying mankind participates in the “aseity” of God—but remains a limited being.
Still there were nagging questions which tested the mediators’ case, just as it had the older scholasticism. Did humankind need to fall and thus did Christ need to be born and die? Did not God cause Adam to fall to bring him to perfection? These questions were not easily dismissed as no conclusive answers were forthcoming. For Hegel the question missed the point. The necessity of the death of God was that it happened. That in turn necessitated the Incarnation and on it went. But when the mediators restored a measure of historical realism to theology, theodicy reared its head and Greek metaphysical dualism returned as provocateur. As long as God was wholly other and outside creation—nothing that happened needed to. The mediators insisted in their orthodoxy that humankind was incomplete (a modern twist on “sinful by nature”)—that from the beginning of time, humankind was meant to find fulfillment in God. In a nutshell, Adam would have to be made complete. That could only be accomplished by Christ. But did that not make the incarnation necessary? And why need Jesus die? Could not reconciliation and unity have been achieved in a less grisly way?
What we see in the face of these challenges is the blending of the new organic ideas with classical ideas of substitution and satisfaction. Once again, Dr. Aubert’s “continuity and discontinuity” is at play. Adam was still the first man in spite of Darwin’s views, but unlike the traditionalist Hodge at Princeton who saw him as legal representative of the race, Gerhardt saw him as organic head. He was complete and without sin (saving God from the embarrassment of causing the Fall) and he need not have sinned. But then what does Gerhardt mean by “created without complete perfection?”
Another daunting modern question had Gerhardt mediating between pantheism and Darwinism. He neither rejected the naturalist outright, nor endorsed him without significant alteration. Thus he did not seek so much to reconcile Darwin’s views to his new, organic orthodoxy, as to commend the idea of human perfection in Christ as a process: organic development. Human perfection would evolve as an inherent organic principle. It was both natural and supernatural (spiritual). That would put him in open conflict with Princeton. Calvin’s idea of human depravity had been honed by scholasticism into an irrefutable reality, with its sharp edge towards a complete alienation from God at the fall. Gerhardt was more generous to Adam, seeing in him and his race divine qualities still intact, if severely limited. There was certainly nothing novel here. What had changed was, however, significant! The power of Dordt for the Reformed was enormous and its narrow pronouncements of human freedom and goodness were enshrined in a confession still binding for many of them. But the modern age would find itself dealing with relativism in these matters. Confessional fissure was rampant and soon it would overwhelm the old American, Protestant denominations such that opinions rather than facts about the atonement were the rule rather than the exception. Certainly, the confessions remained on the books and in that sense authoritative, but departure from those confessions became less and less a matter of church disciplinary action. People began to believe that truth in these matters was personal and that the best thing to do was to be tolerant. And wherever an ecclesial body was unbending, a new denomination was born. Nor would secular law prevent it (nor could it in terms of Amendment I of the Constitution).
The irony here is that Calvin’s preoccupation to protect the sovereignty of God, arguably the idea that would become the controlling principle of his theology, placed all emphasis on an utterly free, transcendent being as the object of faith. The long-term effect of this on Puritan piety was that enormous emphasis on the believing subject became a virtual obsession. It was not inevitable, but in concert with any number of historical forces a formidable Deism in England and France and rationalism in Germany took center stage. The more God was out of the picture, Protagoras’ “man” would be “the measure of all things.” Gerhardt played along with that trend, but only insofar as the future union of humankind with God in Christ—his Christ idea, was foremost. In that sense, and pushing the term to the breaking point, mediation was taking place: the mediation of a transcendent and immanent God. Christ after all became a man—God entered into human history.
Dr. Aubert even finds a mediating role for Hodge, without placing him in the Mediating School, thus once again proving the extraordinary elasticity of the term. But she is careful: the mediation here was between science and religion. That however would make virtually every theologian of the nineteenth century a mediating theologian to some degree. And that is fair to the extent that modern issues had forced Christianity into a defensive posture. Mediation at many levels made sense. But truly Hodge’s embrace of science was thoroughgoing, and yet tempered by a strict dualism that gave prominence to the spiritual world of revelation. Still, science could be employed in the Baconian sense to do exactly what Bacon thought, and that was to discover by logical induction the truth of the atonement.
Another important source for Hodge, says Dr. Aubert, was Hengstenberg—popular with Germans in America for the same reason that Hodge would find him appealing. He was a conservative theologian, fond of Krummacher (the German Reformed’s first choice to replace Rauch), and so right up Hodge’s ally with his passion to wage war on German rationalism and restore evangelical orthodoxy to Germany. Likewise, he campaigned to expunge the influence of Schleiermacher and Hegel. There was not a lot of correspondence between the two, so the connection must be inferred. They liked each other, and Hodge would have appreciated Hengstenberg as a preeminent conservative philologist. But Hengstenberg was by no means representative of German theological science in general, which would not be the case with Hodge in America who garnered great respect and authority. Dr. Aubert might see more continuity than I do in Hodge’s engagement with the Germans on their own turf (of Hodge’s reaction she would say “cautious,” I would say “alarmed”), but time will tell. I do find it illuminating that when Dr. Aubert cites the correspondence between Hodge and Tholuck, in which Hodge asks to be kept informed of German developments, the corresponding citation is found in his “The Latest Form of Infidelity.” It was certainly a mystery to Nevin that Princeton’s venom in attacking him was not tempered by the fact that he was by calling, a representative of German theology in America, serving as head of the German Reformed seminary. Moreover, Princeton played an odd card by suggesting that Nevin’s folly was that he was not a German and therefore could not possibly grasp native German, mystical subtleties and their attempt to “extract moonbeams from cobwebs.”
But she is on solid footing when depicting Hodge in harmony with the neo-Pietists and conservative German theologians. (For example, Dr. Aubert is persuasive when she says Hengstenberg was neither Pietist nor mediator, but rather a confessional theologian.) In this Hodge certainly benefitted from the brilliant, biblical work of Hengstenberg, whose conservatism made Tholuck call him “stiff.” He might have required such timber, as Hodge knew well that Hengstenberg stood “alone and aloft” in Germany—which might also make him difficult to pigeon-hole. Again, it is a matter of emphasis. Hodge conceded that Christianity is a “life” and said as much, as would Hengstenberg, sounding a bit the mediator. But this was not the issue for Hodge, and he dismissed it as obvious. Rather, doctrinal orthodoxy was central to his system, and here Hengstenberg and Hodge were in agreement. But did Hodge “come to agree” with Hengstenberg, or did he discover a like-mind and yet one so much like himself in their unwavering defense of orthodoxy? Princeton after all conceived itself as the last American, embattle bastion of Augustinian orthodoxy.
Again, the appeal of Dr. Aubert’s presentation is the great variety she provides in her survey of the mediating camp and its peripheries. There is only the slightest dilemma however, when concluding such close association between Hodge and Hengstenberg, and then suggesting one was a mediator and the other not. This could be made clearer. But it reflects as much the prevailing literature which indeed still wrestles with this at times, enigmatic movement. I have encountered those who deny Nevin the title “mediating theologian,” and others fully convinced he was. Still, Hodge believed himself to be closer to the early Reformers than Nevin, and Nevin in contrast was perfectly fine with rejecting Calvin on several points and siding with the Lutherans as the case may be. That was his open suspicion of philosophy. Luther and Calvin were wary of philosophy and philosophers in general. Scripture was more reliable for moral and spiritual truth. Luther was notorious for his condemnation of Aristotle and the Reformers unanimously rejected philosophically astute Thomism. Yet the next generation Reformed would outright adopt Aristotle’s categories by way of the system of Ramus, and that the schoolman’s defense of predestination was straight out of Aristotelian logic. It is noteworthy that Hodge’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit was every bit as strong as that of Luther and Calvin, which is saying a lot. And it was Schleiermacher’s relative silence on the Holy Spirit that even today has us questioning the veracity of his doctrine of the Trinity.
Still with regard to their shared aversion to philosophy, caution is advised. The influence of Scottish Common-Sense Realism on Princeton and indeed American Protestant theology in general has long been established. Dr. Aubert has no doubt about this fact, but only seeks to demonstrate that American appetites were not entirely simple. But then why did Hodge and those who shared his theological views boast in their independence from philosophy? Likely it was that they believed that modern realism—from the time of Locke to the later Scottish born Reid and Stewart, was really mental science. It was not a way of getting to truth or meaning, but merely the means of discovering how the mind works, and how it makes judgments about the physical and moral universe.
Nevin went so far as to say of Scottish Common-Sense Realism, that it was not philosophy at all. He meant it with disdain and thus critically. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Hodge agreed in principle—and yet without animus. Indeed he would be pleased with the idea that philosophy was nowhere to be found in modern Realism. By his definition it could not be a substitute for revealed faith, nor was it an entirely trustworthy ally. It was merely mental science (they called it “faculty psychology”). And so it was no serious threat. Nevertheless, Hodge was painfully aware of the fact that empirical philosophy had recently stumbled. Indeed, since the great Locke, the reliable Shaftesbury, and the admirable Butler, philosophy had no champion to lead faithful, Bible-believing Protestants into battle against infidelity. No brilliant apologist had surfaced to direct “Dualistic Realism” as Hodge called his system’s epistemological foundation. This was loudly lamented at Princeton, and, as Mark Noll has powerfully shown, neither would there arise a suitable alternative to naturalistic and analytical philosophy.
In a sense, Scripture was sufficient for them, and if a convincing apology was urgently needed, it would have to wait. One thing Hodge was certain of. It wasn’t to be found in Germany or anywhere in the West for that matter. Still, the lacunae would lead to problems for Hodge’s heirs. His methodology, which in principle garnered enormous credibility for its practical bent, would share an as yet unseen defect with the scientific ethos it admired. Good science does not fit the data to the theory. Hypotheses come from the data and serve no god and no scientist. In theory, they simply are. Hodge’s orthodoxy was simply not that flexible, and he was naïve to think the Bible so facile. But to be evenhanded, the mediators were equally immature in thinking the Christ-principle could stave off the assaults of modernism. But restoration and renewal of the doctrine of the Trinity might help the cause considerably!
The theoretical objectivity of scientific investigation which in Princeton’s case made the Bible an object of study not unlike a geologist might make of a mountain’s strata, merely intensified the confessional fissures cracking Protestantism wide open. It was hopeless for them to think the Bible could provide a uniform account of God and of God’s revelation to mankind, in the same sort of way that geologists could, for example, explain the origin, composition, and age of rocks. But Hodge was simply echoing the putative conclusions of the Reformation. He appeared not to notice that quite the contrary, the post-Reformation spread of ways to read and interpret the Bible had led to a proliferation of interpretations. He seemed indifferent to the fact that interpretations of biblical truth between magisterial Protestants had divided them from the beginning, and the case was even more alarming in the radical Protestant camps. Indeed, he just thought others had got it wrong—bad science. Overwhelming confessional agreement among evangelicals in the beginning gave way to intractability on key issues such as the Eucharist. Sacramental theology bitterly and permanently divided evangelicals. So, while Protestants confidently agreed that the Bible alone was the source of truth, no single confession could provide convincing proof to all of Western Christendom that it had found that truth. Indeed, it was no small thing to disagree about whether Christ was present or absent at their most sacred ritual and whether the meal was or was not a source of grace.
Of course, Princeton had absolutely no doubt that they were right in every case, especially communion practice, and they were equally confident that this was the shared faith of Augustine and the Reformers, not to mention the Bible. Their theology simply confirmed all that as an uncontestable fact supported by the very same proof found in the utterly modern and thus utterly reliable, methods of inductive science. Few today would agree. But, likewise, it would be equally hard to find a majority who think that it’s just a matter of discovering a brilliant philosophy (or theology) or a brilliant philosopher (or theologian) to restore Christian unity. Quixotically, Gerhardt and the mediators effectively believed just that. They were confident that the recent Christological discoveries of Germany had scientifically resolved the sociological question of religion and proven that with the incarnation and God’s inevitable reunion with humankind, Christianity emerged as the undisputed source of truth for all humankind and all time. In their words (borrowed from Hegel), it was “Absolute Religion.” Such was the optimism of the age. Of course, Darwin believed he too had it all figured out—with drastically different results.
Still it is reasonable for Dr. Aubert to direct our focus from Hodge’s Systematics to his biblical theology. And indeed, Nevin did not miss the opportunity to engaged Hodge on that front, most notably his commentary on Romans, as we are likewise encouraged to do by her in our study of Hodge. But how was it that the previous crisis which questioned the Bible’s credibility made so little impact on Princeton? It was not that they were oblivious to the assault. Rather they attributed it to the perceived decadence of Europe—a malaise evident in violent revolutions and repressive regimes; an utter political and moral malaise that America so far had withstood, but which threatened it on several fronts—Liberal Theology being one of them.
Princeton would exhibit enormous influence in its defense of orthodoxy and Hodge’s famous mouthpiece, the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, provides enough evidence of his battles with “infidelity.” His terse reviews reveal the breadth of his reading, but also his resolve to remain informed of Europe and New England’s most recent “experiments.” And as Dr. Aubert explained, we see this most dramatically in Hodge’s defense of the atonement, which turns out to be, not surprisingly, traditionally Reformed but still augmented and reinforced by conservative German scholarship and Hodge’s own mature thinking. Satisfaction theory is vindicated as biblical and unassailable along with the penal effects of Adam’s sin; a guilt which was not imputed generically or organically but legally. This scientific “fact,” insisted Hodge, was not to be derived from experience or philosophy but from the Bible. The idea that there is a text behind the text may ever elude us, but if Hodge and most Americans were convinced that the Bible contained a univocal story, most Germans were not, and in the subsequent decades the host of American exegetes would fall in line with German hermeneutical developments. Soon the names of Rudolf Bultmann and Adolf von Harnack would dominate the interpretive landscape just as Nevin anticipated, and Americans would look to science with its promise of technological development, to lead it into the future.
Today the theological terrain is as rugged, expansive, and uneven as ever, and its contours are being studied more for what they tell us about ourselves than what they tell us, univocally speaking, about God. That may be a humbling lesson for theologians reticent to practice their art in a historical context. But surely that is the great contribution of Dr. Aubert’s book. We should look forward to more from Trans-Atlantic Theology in the future.
Mercersburg Today 