John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist

The Anxious Bench continues to astonish me not only for its insight into the American religious psyche, but for its well-nigh prophetic foreshadowing of the modern American evangelical movement and what passes for its theology. As I've written earlier, its melancholic tone captures perfectly the unease which any Churchly Presbyterian must experience when attempting to discuss the faith with an evangelical. Accordingly, I've been distressed to hear John Williamson Nevin labeled a heretic by some within the Reformed community. While I am no expert on the Mercersburg Theology, any wholesale dismissal of Nevin and Phillip Schaff's work strikes me as uninformed, to say the least.

D.G. Hart's intellectual biography of Nevin is not the book to make one an expert in the Mercersburg Theology (only actual study will do that), but does, with admirable insight, place Nevin in his historical, theological, and most especially ecclesiastical contexts. Nevin will continue as the patron saint of American Presbyterians whose Churchly orientation leaves them at odds not only with evangelicalism, but with much of what passes for Reformed thinking today.

The central issue [for Nevin], unlike most American Reformed or Presbyterians of his day [or ours, MWK], was not the five points of Calvinism or the imputation of Adam's sin. Instead, it was the church and its ministry. (p. 236)

But if the church is primarily an agency of grace through word and sacrament, then when those means of salvation become marginal, Christianity has entered an era fraught with abiding sigificance. (p. 237)

...Nevin's abiding insight: Christianity's primary influence needs to be evaluated not by the church's ability to influence society, but by its performance of sacred rites and recitation of holy words through which the body of Christ grow.s Nevin's recognition that the church has something to offer that no other institution can is still as pertinient at the beginning of a new millennium as it was in 1843 when he first articulated it. That he saw it so early and so clearly is a reason why Nevin should continue to be read and studied by believers and academics alike. (p. 238)

Spittin' Image

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. - Genesis 1:27

Yes, but what does that mean? What does it mean that man was created in the image of God? What distinct faculties of man make him God’s image? What separates us from the animals? Or is the question moot? Has the Fall into sin destroyed God’s image in man?

When wrestling with questions of systematic theology, a good place to begin looking for answers is in our Confessional standards. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, in answer to question 10, states, “God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.” God’s image in man consists primarily in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

The Westminster Divines based this statement on Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24. Both of these texts talk about how the new man, saved from his sinful state, is being renewed in the image of the Creator. Christ’s blood washed away our sin. By good and necessary inference, then, we can apply what is true about redeemed man to the first man in his innocent state.

Colossians 3:10: “(You) have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.” Knowledge of what? The context of this verse is an exhortation to live holy lives, putting off sin. A life of sin is opposed to the knowledge in which we are being renewed. This knowledge is spoken of in Jeremiah 31:33, “`But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ says the LORD: ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” The knowledge in which we are being renewed, the knowledge which characterized Adam and Eve at creation, is the knowledge of the law of God, his holy rule for our lives. As God’s covenant people, his law is written on our hearts, causing us to live an obedience which glorifies him.

This is reinforced by Ephesians 4:24, which comes in the midst of a passage which parallels Colossians 3. “(P)ut on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Here again, the image of God in man is displayed by living lives which please and glorify the Lord. Just as God is holy, man is to be pure and without sinful intent in all aspects of his life. He is to uphold the law of the Lord in his every deed. This is why Paul can sum up his exhortation to Christian living with “Therefore, be imitators of God.” (Eph 5:1)

If the image of God consists primarily in holiness, some might argue man is not the image of God. Sinful man is by definition not holy, and even Christians must struggle with a remnant of sin. Our passages from Colossians and Ephesians teach that sanctification is a process, and we will not be perfectly holy until we pass into glory. After the Fall, can we truly say man is still the image of God?

Our Confession provides a helpful corrective to this line of argument. Look particularly at the Shorter Catechism, questions 17-19, and at chapter 6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. In discussing the effects of the Fall on mankind, the Confession at no point says man is no longer in the image of God. This is because the Bible nowhere teaches such a thing. In fact, Scripture teaches the opposite. In Genesis 9:6 (after man’s Fall into sin in Genesis 3), we read “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.” Capital punishment is based upon the image of God in man. Ultimately, every murderer is trying to destroy the Lord; the death penalty is the proper consequence for attempted deicide. Therefore, even sinful man retains the image of God.

How this is so may be understood by reflecting upon the nature of an image (pun intended). Let’s do an experiment: Gaze in a mirror. That’s what you look like, right? Now drop the mirror on the floor. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) Gaze in the mirror again. Is that what you look like? Well, yes and no. Each shard of glass may reflect back a true likeness, but the whole picture is lost. You may see bits of yourself in the mess on the floor, but you most definitely don’t look like that.

In the same way, we have become distorted reflections of God’s holiness. Instead of perfectly imitating him, we twist his image, reflecting back sin instead of righteousness. Corrupted by our wickedness, fallen man is like a funhouse mirror, distorting the truth about God, testifying that the holy Lord is sinful. Every time we sin, we claim God sins. Regeneration rescues us from this lie. Rebirth in the Holy Spirit (John 3) makes us able, by faith, to act righteously, thereby testifying that the Lord is righteous. This is why the Apostle Paul tells Christians in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3 to live holy lives. The indwelling power of the Holy Spirit is renewing us in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, so we might faithfully reflect the image of God.

In defense of pedantry

As do all right-thinking persons, I've got George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in my web browser's main bookmark menu (just under Mapquest, actually). In this inspiring manifesto for clear writing, he does note brevity is not the same thing as clarity; nonetheless, I think one might be forgiven for confusing them. That's particularly the case when reading the works of many members of my guild, who often give the impression of being paid by the word. Very likely, they write like they preach, and they preach by going on and on, giving three examples when one will do and quoting two dead theologians when no quotation was necessary. This too-prevalent pedantry, this insistence on flogging dead oratories with word upon tedious work, has produced in me a paranoid obsession with brevity in my own writing and speaking.

I bring this up because I have just completed two essays which were so pedantic I actively detested the act of writing them. Again and again, I brought up points of only tangential relevance, and went to ridiculous lengths to clarify that which was already transparent. These may be (and this is saying something) the most boring pieces I've ever written.

And it's not my fault.

I've come to realize pedantry is sometimes dictated by one's subject, or, more precisely, one's audience. If said audience is impressed by an awesome flow of verbiage, if it tends to accept every example in support of an argument as entirely sound of itself, then the person addressing it must argue similarly. Leave a single illustration unanswered, and the audience, having never learned to think through the arguments for themselves, will think the defeated proposition still stands. In other words, sometimes the only way to fight erroneous pedantry is with informed pedantry.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

In the sundry periodicals which I still read, I have of late run across various articles questioning whether Michael Chabon is a literary author, or merely a popular one. I don't care how that question gets answered, as long as he keeps writing paragraphs like this (p. 265):

The wastebasket is a thing for children, blue and yellow with a cartoon dog cavorting in a field of daisies. Landsman stares at it for a long time, thinking about nothing, thinking about children's garbage and dogs in cartoons. The obscure unease that Pluto has always inspried, a dog owned by a mouse, daily confronted with the mutational horor of Goofy.

That's why I read Michael Chabon.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a hard-boiled detective story set in an alternate universe in which Europe's Jews were resettled in Alaska, rather than Palestine, after World War II. The plotting is clever and the dialogue snappy, but as always in Chabon's work, its most compelling element is profound humanism. Its characters are real, recognizable people who operate from a complex and often conflicting set of principles and motives. Of course, my fondness for the novel is likely due, in large part, to recognizing myself in the wreckage of Meyer Landsman, should I suffer similar losses.

I have the "P.S." edition, which includes profiles of the author and an essay of his which led to writing this book. I take great encouragement that he wrote, and left unpublished, another novel on the same subject before he was able to write this one, and has another similarly discarded manuscript in his past. Even amongst the pros, a writer's work demands failures in order to create successes.

Regarding "Torah & Incarnation"

Dear First Things,

In “Torah and Incarnation” (October 2010), Meir Soloveichik captures quite well the essential distinction between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, one grounded, ironically, in their respective readings of the Torah. That distinction is not so much how the gap between man and God is bridged, but who is to do the bridging.

Soloveichik finds in Deuteronomy 4:15 a declaration that the infinite God cannot, by his nature, become a finite human, whereas the passage itself warns Israel not to presume to worship God by images; in other words, to devise their own way to bridge the gap between man and God. The Lord controls his relationship with his people, saying later in Deuteronomy 30:14 that he has given his Word to instruct his people how to respond to him. In this vein, Soloveichik eloquently captures the communal, intergenerational dialogue participated in by every serious student of that Word. However, as Paul (reflecting on Deuteronomy 30:14) argues in Romans 10, this dialogue must not become our pursuit of God, but a discovery of God’s call to believe Jesus is the risen Lord.

Again, when he observes Christians are “carnal” in their belief in an Incarnate God who is really present in the Eucharist, Soloveichik is quite right. But for the Christian, this carnality is identical to, not at odds with, communion with God the Spirit; that is, the Christian faith rejoices in the union of spirit and body and rejects a solely intellectual pursuit of God without regard for one’s body. As the Torah itself teaches us to accept only God’s self-revelation, and as the Lord has revealed himself to us in his Incarnation, the Christian looks not to a present redemption, an Eden of the mind in this present age (however Isaiah 51:3 is properly translated), but to the inauguration of the new heavens and earth in which his body and soul will be one in resurrection glory, even as are those of the Incarnate Lord and Son of God, Jesus Christ, himself.

They called us the best & brightest (without irony!)

I joined Teach for America in 1992, the third year of the program's existence when it was still a relatively small program and nothing like the player it has become in the national education debate. Back then, any news coverage was an exciting affirmation ("Look! I exist!" [we didn't have the webernet, either, if you can believe that]), and those of us of a certain age still tend to read every article and pass it on to fellow veterans.

So it was that one of my roommates from back in the day (who has now cheerfully sold out to work for the Man on Wall Street) noted how TFA's recruits have largely become graduates of schools at which we could never have gotten accepted; in fact, had current standards prevailed then, we'd never have taught in the Houston Independent School District.

We didn't hike Machu Pichu in the 7th grade and rewrite the curriculum for our middle school WHILE IN ELEMENTARY school and so on.

We were just reasonably smart hard working guys who liked kids and had honest aspirations. APPLICATION DENIED!

And there's the rub. Back in the day, I gained some small notoriety within the Houston corps for criticizing TFA's failure to effectively train classroom teachers. TFA's present model really is the answer to my complaints: get the best and brightest exposed to teaching for a couple years in the hopes that a tiny percentage will commit those Machu Pichu-conquering energies to fixing America's public education system. Mind you, this really is working. Look at our own TFA corps year. Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg produced the KIPP charter school movement, and Joel Rose has become the NYC school chancellor's right hand man and is trying to revolutionize teaching paradigms. And, lest I forget the obvious, there's Michelle Rhee, late chancellor of Washington, D.C. schools, TIME magazine cover girl, and documentary film star. The more TFA recruits the best and brightest, the more likely it is to get this kind of impact.

On the other hand, when they admitted losers such as those of us who once rented a house behind a movie theater, they probably got a decent percentage of classroom lifers. I'd guess that more recent TFA veterans are going into administration than in the olden days, but seriously: when you've been accepted by Yale Law, are you really going to be a classroom teacher forever?

At the end of the day, what the system really, really needs is good teachers. Maybe the TFA model can't produce those, but at least it should admit that.

Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: page 161

Calvin observes that natural theology is only possible to the Christian mind which has been disciplined by Sabbath-keeping:

For even though our eyes, in whatever direction they may turn, are compelled to gaze upon God's works, yet we see how changeable is our attention, and how swiftly are dissipated any godly thoughts that may touch us. Here also, until human reason is subjected to the obediance of faith and learns to cultivate that quiet to which the sanctification of the seventh day invites us, it grumbles, as if such proceedings were foreign to God's power.