WHAT IS DR. NEVIN’S POSITION?
The leading article[135] in the Mercersburg Review for October last is from the celebrated pen of J. Williamson Nevin, D.D. Dr. Nevin is a member of the German Reformed Church, and at one period he was president of Marshall College, the leader of a school of theologians, and editor of the Mercersburg Review, to which magazine he is now the ablest contributor. During his editorship he wrote several remarkable articles for its pages, especially those on St. Cyprian, which attracted considerable attention.
Dr. Nevin’s writings are characterized by an earnest religious spirit, a freedom from bigotry, and they always aim at conveying some important Christian verity; which, although he scarcely can be said to know it, finds its true home only in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Hence Catholics can but take an interest in whatever Dr. Nevin writes, and we intend to lay before our readers, with some remarks of our own, the purport of his present article, entitled “The Spiritual World.”
In this article Dr. Nevin tries to show and prove that the work of salvation includes not only the resistance
to inordinate passions, but above all a struggle against, and a conquest over, the world of evil spirits. This is his thesis. He says:
“Flesh and blood, self, the world, and the things of the world around us here in the body, are indeed part of the hostile force we are called to encounter in our way to heaven; they are not the whole of this force, however, nor are they the main part of it, by any means. That belongs always to a more inward and far deeper realm of being, where the powers of the spiritual world are found to go immeasurably beyond all the powers of nature, and to be, at the same time, in truth, the continual source and spring of all that is in these last, whether for good or for evil. The Christian conflict thus, even where it regards things simply of the present life, looks through what is thus mundane, constantly to things which are unseen and eternal; and in this way it becomes in very fact throughout a wrestling, not with flesh and blood, but with the universal powers of evil brought to bear upon us from the other world.”
This he proceeds to prove by the vows of baptism:
“So much we are taught in the form of our Christian baptism itself, by which we are engaged to ‘renounce the devil with all his ways and works, the world with its vain pomp and glory, and the flesh with all its sinful desires.’ In one view these may be regarded as separate enemies; but we know, at the same time, that they form together but one and the
same grand power of evil, no one part of which can be effectually withstood asunder from the diabolical life that animates and actuates the whole. To wrestle with the world or with the flesh really, is to wrestle at the same time really with the full power of hell. If the struggle reach not to this, it may issue in stoic morality or respectable prudence, but it can never come to true self-mastery or victory over the world in the Christian sense. The field for any such conquest lies wholly beyond the realm of mere flesh and blood. The conquest, if gained at all, must be won from the hosts of hell, and then, of course, by the aid only of corresponding heavenly hosts and heavenly armor; which is, in truth, just what our baptism means.”
He calls in philosophy to confirm his thesis, thus:
“The conception of any such comprehension of our life here in the general spiritual order of the universe can be no better than foolishness, we know, for the reigning materialistic thinking of the present time. But it is, in truth, the only rational view of the world’s existence. Philosophy, no less than religion, postulates the idea that the entire creation of God is one thought, in the power of which all things are held together as a single system from alpha to omega, from origin to end; and all modern science is serving continually more and more to confirm this view by showing that all things everywhere look to all things, and that everything everywhere is and can be what it is only through its relations to other things universally. So it is in the world of nature; so it is in the spiritual world; and so it must be also in the union of these two worlds one with the other. It is to be considered a settled maxim now, a mere truism indeed for all true thinkers, that there is no such thing as insulated existence anywhere—such an inconnexum must at once perish, sink into nonentity. It is no weakness of mind, therefore, to think of the spiritual world as a vast nexus of affection and thought (like the waves of the sea, endlessly various and yet multitudinously one), viewed either as heaven or as hell. Without doing so, indeed, no man can believe really in any such world at all. It will be for him simply an abstraction, a notion, a phantom.
And so, again, it is no weakness of mind, in acknowledging the existence of the spiritual world (thus concretely apprehended), to think of our present human life, even here in the body, as holding in real contact and communication organic inward correlation, we may say, with the universal life of that world (angelic and diabolic), in such sort that our entire destiny for weal or woe shall be found to hang upon it, as it is made to do in the teaching of God’s Word here under consideration. It is no weakness of mind, we say, to think of the subject before us in this way. The weakness lies altogether on the other side, with those who refuse the thought of any such organic connection between the life of men here in the body and the life of spirits in the other world.”
These views, so strongly put forth by Dr. Nevin, we hardly need remark, are familiar to all Catholics, agree with the doctrines of all Catholic spiritual authors, especially the mystics, who have written professedly on this subject, and their truth is abundantly illustrated on almost every page of the lives of the saints. The Catholic mystical authors, many of whom were saints, have gone over the entire ground of our relations with the supernatural world, and, both by their learning and personal experience, have conveyed, in their writings on this subject, important knowledge, laid down wise regulations, and given in detail safe, wholesome, practical directions. They seem to breathe in the same atmosphere as that in which the Holy Scriptures were written, and in passing from the reading of the Holy Scriptures to the lives of the saints there is no feeling of any break. They lived in the habitual and conscious presence, and in some cases in sight, of the inhabitants of the supernatural world; and so familiar was their intercourse with the angelical side, and at times so dreadful were the combats to which they were delivered
on the diabolical side, that their lives, for this very reason, become a stumbling-block to worldly Catholics and to Protestants generally. In the lives of her saints the Catholic Church proves that she is not only the teacher of Christianity, but also the inheritor and channel of its life and spirit. How far Dr. Nevin himself would agree with this intense realism of the church in connection with the supernatural world, as seen in the lives of her saints, we have no special means of knowing; but if we may judge from the spirit and drift of the article under consideration, he goes much farther in this direction than is usual for Protestants. Be his opinion what it may, their lives form a concrete evidence of the truth of his thesis. It is the sense of nearness of the spiritual world, and its bearing on the Christian life, pervading as it does the public worship, the private devotions, and the general tone of Catholics, that characterizes them from those who went out from the fold of the Catholic Church in the religious revolution of three centuries ago. This whole field has become to Protestants, in the process of time, a terra incognita; and if Dr. Nevin can bring them again to its knowledge, and in “constant, living union” with it, he will have done a most extraordinary work.
Efforts of this kind and of a similar nature have not been wanting in one way or another, and are not now wanting, among Protestants. There are those who show a decided interest in the works of the spiritual writers of the Catholic Church. Strange to say—and yet it is not strange; for in this they follow the law of similia similibus—they are particularly fond of those authors whose writings are not altogether
sound or whose doctrines are tainted with exaggerations. Thus Dr. Upham will write the life of Madame Guyon; another will translate The Maxims of the Saints, by Fénelon; and to another class there is a peculiar charm in the history of the Jansenistic movement of Port Royal; others, again, moved by the same instinct, will not hesitate to acknowledge with Dr. Mahan that “such individuals as Thomas à Kempis, Catherine Adorno [he means St. Catherine of Genoa], and many others were not only Christians, but believers who had a knowledge of all the mysteries of the higher life, and who, through all coming time, will shine as stars of the first magnitude in the firmament of the Church. In their inward experiences, holy walk, and ‘power with God and with men,’ they had few, if any, superiors in any preceding era of church history. ‘The unction of the Spirit’ was as manifest in them as in the apostles and primitive believers”;[136] while many of this class in the Episcopal Church translate from foreign languages into English the works of Catholic ascetic writers, and books of devotion, for the use of pious members of their persuasion. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould will give you in English, in many volumes, the complete lives of the saints. They even go so far, both in England and the United States, as to found religious orders of both sexes as schools for the better attainment of Christian perfection, and venture to take the name of a Catholic saint as their patron.
It is evident that, among a class of souls upon whom the church can be said to exert no direct influence,
there is a movement towards seeking nearer relations with the unseen spiritual world, accompanied with a desire for closer union with God. It finds expression among all Protestant denominations. With the Methodists and Presbyterians it is known by the name of “perfectionism,” or “the higher life,” or “the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” It is also manifested by the efforts made now and again for union among all the Protestant sects. It is the same craving of this mystical instinct for satisfaction that lies at the root of spiritism, which has spread so rapidly and extensively outside of the Catholic Church, not only among sceptics and unbelievers, but even among all classes of Protestants, and entered largely into their pulpits.
The former movement assumes a religious aspect; but lacking the scientific knowledge of spiritual life, and the practical discipline necessary to its true development and perfection, it gradually dies out or runs into every kind of vagary and exaggeration. Recently, after having made not a little commotion among different denominations in England and Germany, it came, in the person of its American apostle, Mr. Pearsall Smith, to a sudden and disgraceful collapse. “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.” The latter movement—spiritism—leads directly to the entire emancipation of the flesh, resulting in free-lovism, and sometimes ending in possession and diabolism. Spiritism is Satan’s master-stroke, in which he obtains from his adepts the denial of his own existence. These are some of the bitter fruits of the separation from Catholic unity: those who took this step under the pretence of seeking a higher spiritual life are afflicted
with spiritual languor and death; and they who were led by a boasted independence of Christ have fallen into the snares of Satan and become his dupes and abject slaves. Behold the revenge of neglected Catholic truth; for only in Catholic unity every truth is held in its true relation with all other truths, shines in its full splendor, and produces its wholesome and precious fruits!
Suppose for a moment that Dr. Nevin should succeed in the task which he has undertaken, and by his efforts raise those around him, and the whole Protestant world, to a sense of their relation to the supernatural world. What then? Why, he has only brought souls to a state which many Protestants have reached before; and when they sought for the light, aid, and sympathy which these new conditions required, in those around them, they found none.
By quickening their spiritual sensibilities you have opened the door to wilder fancies, more dangerous illusions, and thereby exposed the salvation of their souls to greater perils. For, as St. Gregory tells us: “Ars artium est regimen animarum”—the art of arts is the guidance of souls; and where is this art, this science, this discipline, to be found? Not in Protestantism. What then? Why, either these souls have to renounce their holiest convictions, their newly-awakened spiritual life, and sink into their former insensibility; or go where they can find true guidance, certain peace, and spiritual progress—enter into the bosom of the holy Catholic Church, where alone the cravings of that spiritual hunger can be appeased which nowhere else upon earth found food, and the soul can at last breathe freely.
But there is another point involved
in Dr. Nevin’s article; and however so much, as Catholics, we may sympathize with his endeavors to awaken Protestants to their relations with the supernatural world, this point in question will come up, and we cannot help putting it: What is Dr. Nevin’s criterion of revealed truth? The rule of interpretation of the written Word? Dr. Nevin has one; for neither he nor any one else can move a single step without employing and applying, implicitly or explicitly, a rule of faith. He criticises, judges, condemns others, but on what ground? Does his own position, at bottom, differ from that of those whom he condemns? He lacks neither the ability nor the learning to make a consistent statement on this point. Truth is consistent. God is not the author of confusion.
Where does Dr. Nevin find or put the rule of faith? If it be placed in simple human reason, then we have as the result, in religion, pure rationalism. If it be placed in human reason illuminated by grace, then we have illuminism. If it be placed in both of these, with the written Word—that is, the Bible as interpreted by each individual with the assistance of divine grace—then we have the common rule of faith of all Protestants, so fruitful in breeding sects and schisms, and inevitably tending to the entire negation of Christianity.
This last appears to be Dr. Nevin’s rule of faith; for what else does he mean when in the beginning of his article, its second sentence, he makes the following surprising statement: “Christianity is a theory of salvation”? Did God descend from heaven and become man upon earth, live, suffer, and die, and for what? “A theory”! Is this the whole issue
and reality of Christianity—“a theory,” a speculation? Did Christ rise from the dead and ascend to the Father, and, with him, send forth upon earth the Holy Ghost, to create “a theory,” a speculation, or an abstraction? “Christianity a theory”! We fear that one who would deliberately make that assertion has never had the true conception of what is meant by the reality of Christianity. What would be said of a man who in treating of the sun should say: The sun is a theory, or a speculation, or an exposition of the abstract principles of light? If the sun be a theory, it would be quickly asked, what becomes, in the meanwhile, of the reality of the sun? This way of dealing with Christianity, while professing to explain it, allows its reality altogether to escape. Notwithstanding Dr. Nevin’s condemnation of “the abstract spiritualistic thinking of the age,” and of those who would make Christianity “a fond sentiment simply of their own fancy,” he falls, in his definition of Christianity, into the very same error which in others he emphatically condemns.
That this is so is evident; for while he says, “Christianity is a theory,” he adds in the same sentence, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” Now, the separation, even in idea, between the church and Christianity, is the fountain, source, and origin of all the illusions and errors uttered or written, since the beginning, concerning the Christian religion. The attempt to get at and set up a Christianity independently of the Christian Church is the very essence and nature of all heresies. The church and Christianity are distinguishable, but not separable; and in assuming their separability, as a primary position, lies all the confusion of ideas and
misapprehensions of Christianity in the author of the article under present consideration. This point needs further explanation, as it is all-important, and forms, indeed, the very root of the matter. “Christianity is a theory,” says Dr. Nevin, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” But what does Dr. Nevin mean by “divine revelation”? Here are his own words in explanation:
“When the question arises, How are we to be made in this way partakers of the living Christ, so that our religion shall be in very deed—not a name only, not a doctrinal or ritualistic fetich merely, nor a fond sentiment simply of our own fancy?” “All turns in this case on our standing in the divine order as it reaches us from the Father through the Son. That meets us in the written Word of God, which, in the way we have before seen, is nothing less in its interior life than the presence of the Lord of life and glory himself in the world.”
Again:
“We cannot now follow out the subject with any sort of adequate discussion. We will simply say, therefore, that what our Lord says here of his words or commandments is just what the Scriptures everywhere attribute to themselves in the same respect and view. They claim to be spirit and life, to have in them supernatural and heavenly power, to be able to make men wise unto everlasting life, to be the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever—not the memory or report simply of such word spoken in time past, but the always present energy of it reaching through the ages. The Scriptures—God’s law, testimonies, commandments, statutes, judgments, his word in form of history, ritual, psalmody, and prophecy—are all this through what they are as the ‘testimony of Jesus’; and therefore it is that they are, in truth, what the ark of God’s covenant represented of old, the conjunction of heaven and earth, and in this way a real place of meeting or convention between men and God. To know this, to own it, to acknowledge inwardly the presence of Christ in his Word, as the same Jehovah
from whom the law came on Mount Sinai; and then to fear the Lord as thus revealed in his Word, to bow before his authority, and to walk in his ways; or, in shorter phrase, to ‘fear God and keep his commandments,’ because they are his commandments, and not for any lower reason—this is the whole duty of man, and of itself the bringing of man into union with God; the full verification of which is reached at last only in and by the Word made glorious through the glorification of the Lord himself; as when, in the passage before us he makes the keeping of his commandments the one simple condition of all that is comprehended in the idea of the mystical union between himself and his people.”
According, then, to Dr. Nevin, “the divine order of our being” made “partakers of the living Christ is in the Word of God.”
To make what is plain unmistakable, he adds:
“What we have to do, then, especially in the war we are called to wage with the powers of hell, is to see that this conjunction with Christ be in us really and truly, through a proper continual use of the Word of God for this purpose.”
There is here and there throughout this article a haziness of language which smacks of Swedenborgianism, and makes it difficult to seize its precise meaning; but we submit that Dr. Nevin—and he will probably accept the statement, as our only aim is to get at his real meaning—proceeds on the supposition that Christianity is a theory, and becomes real as each individual, illumined by divine light, discovers and appropriates it in reading the written Word—the Bible. This is the common ground of Protestantism; and Dr. Nevin holds no other than the rule of faith of all Protestants. The following passage places this beyond doubt or cavil:
“It was the life of the risen Lord himself, shining into the written Word, and through this into the mind of the disciples,
which, by inward correspondence, served to open their understanding to the proper knowledge of both. And as it was then, so it is still. We learn what the written Word is only by light from the incarnate Word; but then, again, we learn what the light of the incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the written Word—a circle, it is true, which alone, however, brings us to the true ground of the Christian faith.”
We need scarcely tell our readers that this pretended rule of faith is no rule of faith at all. It breaks down on any reasonable test which you may apply to it. It will not stand the trial of the written Word itself, nor of history, nor of common sense, nor of good and sound logic. This has been too often demonstrated to require here long argumentation. Therefore, when a man ventures to speak for Christianity, and professes to define and explain what is Christianity, the question rises up at once, and naturally: What does this man know, in fact, about Christianity? Did he live in the time of Christ? Did he ever speak to Christ, or see him? Was he a witness to his miracles? Why, no! He can bear testimony to none of these events. If he was not a contemporary of Christ, what, then, does he know about him? Where has he obtained his knowledge to set up for a teacher of Christianity? On what grounds does he presume to speak for Christianity? Does he come commissioned by those whom Christ authorized to teach in his name? Why, no; they repudiate him in the character of a teacher of Christ. Does he prove by direct miraculous power from God to speak in his name? Why, no! Then he has no commission, indirect or direct; then he is unauthorized, a self-sent and a self-appointed teacher!
But he fancies he has a light to speak for Christianity on the authority of certain historical documents which contain an account of Christ and his doctrines. But how about these documents? What authority verified and stamped them with its approval as genuine, and rejected others, which professed to be genuine, as spurious? Why, the very authority which verified these documents, and on which he has to rely for their genuineness and divine inspiration, is the very authority which altogether denies his presumed right of teaching Christianity! The authority which authenticated them rejects as spurious his claim to be the interpreter of their true meaning. How does he get over this difficulty? He does not get over it. He simply ignores it.
But do these documents profess to give a full and complete account of Christianity? By no means. He assumes this too. What! assumes the vital point of his own rule, which is in dispute? He does. Strange that those who were inspired to write these so important documents should not have written their great object plainly on their face; and stranger still, if they did, that this should have remained a secret many centuries before its discovery!
Then this was not the way the primitive Christians learned Christianity? Not at all. There were millions of Christians who spilt their blood for Christianity, and millions more who had died in the faith, before these documents were verified and put in the shape which we now have them and call the Bible. This pretended rule, then, unchristianizes the early Christians? It does; and does more—it unchristianizes the great bulk of Christians
since; for the mass of Christians could not obtain Bibles before the invention of printing, and could not read them if they had them. Even to-day, if this be the rule, how about the children, the blind, and those who cannot read—not a small number? How are they to become Christians?
But as the Bible is an inspired book, to get at its true meaning requires the same divine Spirit which inspired it? Of course it does. But do they that follow this rule assume that each one for himself has this divine Spirit? Nothing else. But are they sure of this? Sure of it?—they say so. But are they sure that each one has the divine Spirit to interpret rightly the divinely-inspired, written Word? Each one thinks so. Thinks so! But do they not know it? Do they not know it? Why, let me explain: “You see we learn what the written Word is only by light from the incarnate Word.” But how do you get the light from the incarnate Word? Why, “we learn what the light of the incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the written Word.” That is, you suppose that the Bible, read with proper dispositions, conveys to your soul divine grace? Just so. That is, you put the Bible in the place of the sacraments; but that is not the question now. The question, the point, now at issue is: How do you know that that light which shines into you through the written Word is not “a fond sentiment simply of your own fancy,” is not a delusion, instead of “the light of the incarnate Word”? “Oh! I see what you are aiming at. A book divinely inspired requires for its interpreter the divine Spirit to get at its divine meaning. Now, if those who assume to possess this Spirit contradict each other point-blank
in their interpretation of its meaning, then this is equivalent to charging the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, with error; and such a charge is blasphemy! But this is pushing things too far.”
Perhaps so; nevertheless, those who follow this rule of faith do differ in their interpretation of Holy Scripture, and differ as far as heaven is from earth. There is no end to their differences. Almost every day breeds a new sect. They not only differ from each other, but each one differs from himself; and why? Because none are certain that they have the inspired Word of God, except on a basis which undermines their position; and none are certain that the light by which they interpret the written Word of God is the unerring Spirit of truth. Hence all who hold this rule gradually decline into uncertitude, doubt, scepticism, and total unbelief.
But how do the followers of this rule of faith interpret those passages of Holy Scriptures which speak so plainly of the church?—for instance, where Christ promises to “build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”; “He that heareth not the church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican”; “The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth”; “Christ died for the church”; “The church is ever subject to Christ”; and others of like import. They either pass them by as of no account, or deal with them as an artist does with a piece of clay or wax—they mould them to suit their fancy. Truly, this rule of faith reduces the divine reality of Christianity to the efforts of one’s own thought—“a theory.”
Dr. Nevin may struggle against the inevitable results of this rule,
as he does in several places in the present article, but he stands on the same inclined plane as those whom he condemns, and, in spite of his earnest counter-efforts, he is descending visibly with them into the same abyss. For the effort to get at the reality of Christianity, and to escape the recognition of the divine authority of the church, through the personal interpretation of the written Word, is a vain, absurd, and fatal expedient. “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber” (John x. 1).
As the attempt to separate the church and Christianity from each other empties Christianity of all its contents and destroys its reality, so, reversely, the conception of the transcendent union and inseparability of the church and Christianity leads to the recognition of the living, constant, divine reality of Christianity. For the Christian Church was called into being by God, the Holy Ghost, the Creator Spirit; and as this primary creative act still subsists in her in all its original vigor, she is, at every moment of her life, equally real, living, divine. Just as the created universe exists by the continuation of the creative act which called it into existence at the beginning, so the Catholic Church exists by the continuation of the supernatural creative act which called her into existence on the day of Pentecost. Once the church, always the church.
The church and the Bible are, in their divine origin, one; they co-operate together for the same end, and are in their nature inseparable. But the written Word is relative or subsidiary to the church, having for its aim to enlighten, to strengthen, and to perfect the faithful in
that supernatural life of the Spirit in which they were begotten in the layer of regeneration, in the bosom of the holy church. The purpose of the written Word is, therefore, to effect a more perfect realization of the church, and to accelerate her true progress in the redemption and sanctification of the world. Hence the written Word presupposes the existence of the church, is within and in the keeping of the church, and depends on her divine authority for its authentication and true interpretation. The church is primary, and not enclosed in the written Word; but the end of the written Word is enclosed in that of the church.
Were not a word of divine revelation written, the church would have none the less existed in all her divine reality, and she would have none the less accomplished her divine mission upon earth. For God, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is her life, power, guide, and protector. God the Son was incarnate in the man Christ Jesus; so God the Holy Spirit was incorporate in the holy Catholic Church.
Undoubtedly the apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write all that they wrote; but their Gospels and their Epistles always presuppose the church as existing. To appeal, therefore, from the church to the written Word of the New Testament, if nothing else, is to be guilty of an anachronism.
Even as to the Old Testament, before the Incarnation as well as after the Incarnation, the reality of the church consisted in that supernatural communion between God and man which existed at the moment of his creation. The church, therefore, existed, at least in potentiality, in the garden of Paradise, and was historically primary
in the order of supernatural communications.
Wherein does Dr. Nevin differ from the Ebionites, the Nicolaites, the Gnostics, the common Protestants, down to Joe Smith, Père Hyacinthe, and Bishop Reinkens? Perceptibly, at bottom, there is no difference. Dr. Nevin appears to have never asked himself seriously the most searching of all questions, to wit: What, in the last analysis, is the basis, standard, or rule by which I judge what is and what is not Christianity? He ventures to treat of the gravest questions and most momentous mysteries touching the kingdom of God, on which the saints would not have ventured a personal opinion; and on what grounds? But it may be said in his excuse, and with truth, that this self-sufficient attitude is due to the very position of defiance to the divine authority of the church in which all those who have gone out, or are born out, of her fold are necessarily involved.
To sum up: Either we must suppose that God has left the task
to every individual to direct the human race to the great end for which he created it—and thus the individual occupies the place of Almighty God, and turns the crank of the universe to suit his own fancy, or the schemes and theories of the cogitations of his little brain—or believe in “a divine order,” in being made constant partakers of the living Christ “in a concrete form.” In this case, our first duty is to find this real concrete body, become a member and partaker of its divine life, and, in conquering the obstacles in the way of our salvation, co-operate in its divine work for the whole world.
But the history of these last three centuries shows conclusively that there is no standing-place between the Catholic Church and Protestantism; and it has made it equally clear that Protestantism has no standing ground of its own, and therefore no man can be a Christian, and defend with perfect consistency his position, out of the Catholic Church.
[135] “The Spiritual World,” by J. W. Nevin, D.D., the Mercersburg Review, October, 1876.
[136] The Baptism of the Holy Ghost, by Rev. Asa Mahan, D.D., p. 81.