The mystical presence. A vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

Front matter

THE v«TICAL PRESENCE.

A VINDICATION OF THE

REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE

Preface

The following work has grown directly out of some controversy which has had place, during the past year, in the German Reformed Church, on the subject to which it relates. This stands related to it, however, only as an external occasion, and has not been permitted to come into view, in any way, in the work itself.

It is not felt that any apology is needed for the publication. — This is found in the importance of its subject, which must be left of course to speak for itself.

As the Eucharist forms the very heart of the whole Christian worship, so it is clear that the entire question of the Church, which all are compelled to acknowledge, the great life-problem of the age, centres ultimately in the sacramental question as its inmost heart and core. Our view of the Lord's Supper must ever condition and rule in the end our view of Christ's person and the conception we form of the Church. It must influence at the same time, very materially, our whole system of theology, as well as all our ideas of ecclesiastical history.

Is it true that the modern Protestant Church in this country has, in large part at least, fallen away from the sacramental doctrine of the sixteenth century ? All must at least allow, that there is some room for asking the question. If so, it is equally plain that it is a question which is entitled to a serious answer. For in the nature of the case, such a falling away, if it exist at all, must be connected with a still more general removal from the original platform of the Church. The eucharistic doctrine of the sixteenth

PREFACE.

century was interwoven w r ith the whole church system of the time ; to give it up, then, must involve in the end a renunciation in principle, if not in profession, of this system itself in its radical, distinctive constitution. If it can be shown that no material change has taken place, it is due to an interest of such high consequence that this should be satisfactorily done. Or if the change should be allowed, and still vindicated as a legitimate advance on the original Protestant faith, let this ground be openly and consciously taken. Let us know, at least, where we are and what we actually do believe, in the case of this central question, as compared with the theological stand-point of our Catechisms and Confessions of Faith.

The relations of this inquiry to the question concerning the true idea of the Church, will easily be felt by every well-informed and reflecting mind. If the fact of the incarnation be indeed the principle and source of a new supernatural order of life for humanity itself, the Church, of course, is no abstraction. It must be a true, living, divine-human constitution in the world ; strictly organic in its nature — not a device or contrivance ingeniously fitted to serve certain purposes beyond itself — but the necessary, essential form of Christianity, in whose presence only it is possible to conceive intelligently of piety in its individual manifestations. The life of the single Christian can be real and healthful only as it is born from the general life of the Church, and carried by it onward to the end. We are Christians singly, by partaking (having part) in the general life-revelation, which is already at hand organically in the Church, the living and life-giving body of Jesus Christ. As thus real and organic, moreover, Christianity must be historical. No higher wrong can be done to it than to call in question its true historical character ; for this is, in fact, to turn it into a phantasm, and to overthrow the solid fact-basis on which its foundations eternally rest. It must be historical, too, under the form of the Church; for the realness of Christianity demands indispensably the presence of the general life of Christ, flowing with unbroken continuity from the beginning as the medium of all particular union with him from age to age. Then, again, the historical Church must be visible, or in other words,

PREFACE.

not merely ideal, but actual. The actual may indeed fall short immeasurably of the idea it represents ; the visible Church may be imperfect, corrupt, false to its own conception and calling; but still an actual, continuously visible Church there must always be in the world, if Christianity is to have either truth or reality in the form of a new creation. A purely invisible Church has been well denominated a contradictio in adjecto ; since the very idea of a Church implies the manifestation of the religious life, as something social and common.

The whole conception that the externalization of the Christian life is something accidental only to the constitution of this life itself — a sort of mechanical machinery, to help it forward in an outward way — is exceedingly derogatory to the Church, and injurious in its bearings on religion. An outward Church is the necessary form of the new creation in Christ Jesus, in its very nature ; and must continue to be so, not only through all time, but through all eternity likewise. Outward social worship, which implies, of course, forms for the purpose, is to be regarded as something essential to piety itself. A religion without externals, must ever be fantastic and false. The simple utterance of religious feeling, by which the spirit takes outward form, is needed, not for something beyond itself, but for the perfection of the feeling itself. Forms, iu this sense, not as sundered from inward life, of course, but as embracing it, enter as a constituent element into the very life of Christianity. As a real, human, historical constitution in the world, the outward and inward in the Church can never be divorced, without peril to all that is most precious in the Christian faith. We have no right to set the inward in opposition to the outward, the spiritual in opposition to the corporeal, in religion. The incarnation of the Son of God, as it is the principle, forms also the true measure and test, of all sound Christianity, in this view. To be reed, the human, as such, and of course the divine also in human form, must ever externalize its inward life. All thought, all feeling, every spiritual state, must take body, (in the way of word, or outward form of some sort,) in order to come at all to any true perfection in itself. This is the proper, deep sense of all liturgical services in religion. The necessity here

PREFACE.

affirmed is universal. The more intensely spiritual any state may be, the more irresistibly urgent will ever be found its tendency to clothe itself, and make itself complete, in a suitable external form. Away with the imagination, then, that externals in Christianity, (including the conception of the visible Church itself,) are something accidental only to its true constitution, a cunningly framed device merely for advancing some interest foreign from themselves. To think of the Church, and of Christian worship, as means simply to something else, is to dishonour religion itself in the most serious manner.

If the present work may serve to fix attention on the momentous point with which it is concerned, and thus contribute indirectly even to a clearer understanding of Protestant truth, I shall feel that it has not been written in vain. May God accept it, and crown it with his blessing. J. W. N.

Mercersburg, April, 1846.

Contents

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. — Translation from Ullman.

ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY.

Object and Nature of the Inquiry, . . . . . 13

Chapter I. Reformed Or Calvinistic Doctrine Of The Lord's Suffer

Introductory Remarks. — -Importance of the Eucharistic Question. — Sixteenth Century. — Modern Protestantism. — Claims of the subject, . 61

Sect. I. — Statement of the Doctrine.

Authority of Calvin in the Reformed Church, ... 54

Relation of the doctrine to the view taken of Christ's union generally

with his people, ........ 54

Distinctions on the side towards Rationalism ; the participation of the believer in Christ, not common relationship only to Adam; not a merely moral union ; not a union in law simply ; not communion with his divine nature alone or with the Holy Ghost as his representative ; but a real communication with his substantia], personal, mediatorial life, . . . . . . . 55 s

CONTENTS.

The doctrine bounded on the opposite side. — Not transubstantiation ; nor consubstantiation. — Real conjunction with Christ, through faith, by the Spirit, . . . . . . . .58

Grace of the Sacrament objective ; including the actual life of Christ,

particularly in its human character, . . . . . 61

Sect. II. — Historical Evidence.

Reformed doctrine gradually established. — Relation of Zuingli to the

Church. — His view of the Sacrament, . . . . .63

Early Helvetic Church. — Confession of Basel. — First Helvetic Confession, ......... 65

Calvin — Extracts from his Institutes. — Catechism of Geneva, . . 67

Tract Be vera participation, against Hesshuss, ... 71 Common misrepresentation of Calvin's view. — His own statement of it

clear and full. — Testimony of Schleiermacher, . . .73

Farel and Beza. — Colloquy of Worms, . . . . 75

Beza and Peter Martyr. — Conference at Poissy, . . . .76

Gallic Confession. — Old Scotch Confession. — Belgic Confession. — Second Helvetic Confession, ...... 79

Heidelberg Catechism. — Circumstances of its formation. — Extracts. —

Commentary on their sense, . . . . . .83

Ursinus, the author of the Catechism. — His sacramental doctrine as

exhibited by himself, ...... 90

Hospinian. — General testimony, . . . . . .94

The Synod of Dort, 95 Westminster Confession. — Note on Church of England, . . 96

Testimony of Hooker, ....... 98

Extracts from Owen, the oracle of the Independents, . . . 101

Chapter II. Modern Puritan Theory

Sect. I. — Historical Exhibition.

Falling away from the creed of the Reformation. — Most striking in the American Lutheran Church. — Note on the so called Lutheran Obser-

Same evil in the Reformed Church. — Baptists — Prevalence of the bap-

tistic principle. — Sect system, ...... 107

Extracts from Ridgely's Body of Divinity, . . . 109

President Edwards. — Hopkins. — Bellamy, . . . .110

Extracts from Dwight's Theology, .... \\2

Extracts from Dick's Theology, . . . . . .113

Dr. Green. — Barnes' Commentary, . . . . .115

Sect. II. — Systems Contrasted.

Difference real and seriously important, . . . . .117

First point. — The Eucharist as related to other services, . . ng

Second point. — Mysteriousness of the ordinance, . . .118

Third point. — Idea of its objective value or force, . . . 120

Fourth point. — Communion with Christ's person, . . . \22

Fifth point. — Participation in his body and blood, . . . 124

Claims of the question to earnest attention, . . . .126

CONTENTS.

Sect. Ill — Faith of the Early Church.

First general presumption here against the Modern Puritan view, as a

departure from the faith of the orthodox Church in all ages, . 127

Under all confusion and variation of views as to the mode, the idea of the fact has ever been the same ; namely, that the Eucharist involves a real communion with Christ's life, ..... 128

Only such a faith could have been carried, by abuse, into the gross error

of transubstantiation, ...... 129

The idea of an offering for sin. — Atonement viewed as real, only as apprehended in Christ's person, . . . . . .130

Testimony of Ignatius. — Justin Martyn, . . . .131

Irenaeus. — The view of these fathers most general, . . .132

Tertullian and Cyprian, . . . . . . .133

Alexandrian fathers. — Clement. — Origen, . . . . .134

Cyril of Jerusalem. — Chrysostom, . . . . .135

Ambrose.— Augustine, . . . . . . .135

In rejecting transubstantiation, the Reformers still acknowledged the

authority of the early church, and appealed to the fathers, . 138

Sect. IV. — Rationalism and the Sects.

Second general presumption against the Modern Puritan view ; its affinity with the rationalistic tendency, theoretic and practical, . 139

Socinianism of the Sixteenth Century, ..... 139

Arminianism in the Seventeenth Century, .... 140

Neological Rationalism in the Eighteenth Century, . . . 141

General want of faith in this period, ..... 142

Note on Storr and Reinhard, ...... 143

Extracts from Mursinna, Doederlein, Knapp, .... 144

Henke. — Wegscheider. — Bretschneider, .... 145

Rationalistic Supranaturalism. — Its end, ..... 146

Sect principle. — Its affinity with Rationalism, .... 147

Hyper-spiritualism ends always in the flesh, .... 148

Anabaptists. — Quakers, . . . . . .149

Baptistic principle. — Sure index of schism and heresy, . . . 149 Association of the Modern Puritan view with this false tendency, a just

ground for jealousy, ....... 151

Chapter III. Scientific Statement

Need of some formal modification, in the statement of the doctrine, . 155

Sect. I. — Preliminary Positions.

The Calvinistic theory not sufficiently clear, in the conception of life as

an organic law, ....... 156

Fails to insist properly on the absolute unity which belongs to the idea

Comes to no clear representation of the distinction, between life as

something individual and life as generic, .... 160 These three points of great account, as it regards the apprehension of

the doctrine, 161

I

10 CONTENTS.

Sect. IT. — Theses on the Mystical Union,

The race hopelessly lost in Adam, ..... 164

This ruin includes soul and body, ...... 164

Human nature recovered in Jesus Christ, .... 165

The value of Christ's whole life and death, based on the generic character of his humanity, . . . . . . .166

The Christian Salvation a new Life, . . . . .166

This life in all respects Human, . . . . . ,167

The extension of it in the Church, ..... 167

Our union with Christ consists in oneness of life, .... 168

More intimate and deep than our union with the first Adam, . 168

Includes necessarily a participation in the entire Humanity of Christ, . 169

Embraces also the whole person of the believer, . . . 170

All the result of a single undivided process, .... 171

No material contact in the case, ..... 172

No ubiquity of Christ's body ; no loss of his proper separate personality, 173

This union goes beyond every other that is known in the world, . . 174

Wrought only by the power of the Holy Ghost, . . . 175

Only through the instrumentality of faith, .... 176

The new life is a process, which will become complete finally in the

resurrection, . . . . . . 176

Sect. III. — Theses on the Lord's Supper.

Nature of a Sacrament, . . . . . . .178

The Lord's Supper a participation in the body and blood of Christ, and

so of all his benefits, . . . . . . . 179

The Lord's Supper has reference directly to the idea of atonement, as

wrought out by Christ's death, ...... 179

As imparting however a real interest in this, it involves a real communication with the life of Christ, . . . . .180

This extends to his tvhole person, ...... 181

The eucharist as such the channel of this grace, . . . 182

The communication always through the soul, in a central way, . .182 Holds only in the case of believers, ..... 183

Excludes transubstantiation and consubstantiation, . . .184

Sect. IV. — False Theories Exposed,

Every lower view of the Mystical Union more or less rationalistic and

self-destructive, . . . . . . . 1S6

The Socinian hypothesis, ....... 186

The Pelagian hypothesis, . . . . . .187

The theory of a divine i( moral suasion," .... 188

Abstract legal imputation, ...... 1S9

The Spirit as a surrogate for Christ's presence ; in the way of influence

only; or in the way of new creation, ..... 193

The idea of divided personality, . . . . . 198

Chapter IV. Biblical Argument

Sect. I. — The Incarnation,

The Incarnation the key to all God's works and ways.— Nature and

CONTENTS.

Relation of Christ to Humanity, ..... 200

History looks always to the same centre, ..... 201

Paganism, negatively prophetical of Christ, .... 202

Judaism a positive preparation for his coming, .... 203

Sect. II. — The New Creation,

Relation of Christianity to previous life, .... 205

Historical, and yet supernatural and new, .... 206

A divine creation in the world, ..... 207

Judaism the shadow only of what now became real in Christ, . . 207

Christianity the absolute truth, ..... 207 Christ's person the great miracle by which his mission authenticates

Sect. III. — The Second Adam.

Christ a real man, ....... 210

His humanity generic, ....... 210

Parallel between Christ and Adam, . . . . .211

Sect. IV. — Christianity a Life.

Distinctive nature of Christianity, . . . . . .213

The Ebionetic stand point, . . . . . .213

Testimony of the Evangelist John, ..... 214

Declarations of the Saviour himself, . . . . . 215

Christ the Resurrection and the Life, ..... 216

Testimony of the Apostle Paul, ..... 218

The morality of the gospel based always on this view, . . . 220

Sect. V. — The Mystical Union.

Christ the principle and ground of the entire Christian life, . . 221

The Spirit under the New Testament, ..... 222 Twofold aspect of Christ's person, as exhibited in the flesh and in the

Spirit, 22S

His life in the Spirit flows over into the persons of his people, . . 224

His presence by the Spirit involves his personal presence, . . 225 His existence in the Spirit includes his full humanity as well as his

The spiritual or pneumatic body. ..... 226

Proper conception of the resurrection, ..... 228

Nature of the mystical union, ...... 229

Allegory of the vine and its branches, ..... 229

Allegory of the body and its members, .... 230

Illustration from the idea of marriage, . . . . .231

Striking phraseology of the New Testament, .... 233

Christians complete in Christ, ...... 233

Olshausen on Rom. viii. 30, ...... 234

Sect. VI.— John vi. 56—58.

Importance of the passage, 237

Christ the bread of life, ...... 238

Advance upon the general thought, ..... 238

Correspondence with the idea of the eucharist, . . * 239

CONTENTS.

Reference directly to the atonement ; but to this as comprehended in

The life only, gives reality and force to the atonement, . . 240

All by the Spirit, not in the flesh, ...... 241

Bearing on the eucharistic question, ..... 242

Sect. VII. — The Lord's Supper.

True method of using the Scriptures, ..... 244 Christianity a real supernatural constitution in the world. — This must

be felt to judge properly of the Sacraments, . . . 246

Relation of the Passover to the Lord's Supper, .... 249

The Institution of the Lord's Supper, .... 251

The Reality of all that was Shadow, in the Jewish Sacrament, . . 252

Communion in the covenant only by communion in the sacrifice, . 253

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

In the January number of the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, for 1845, there is an admirable article, from the pen of Br. C. Ullmann,* Professor in Heidelberg, on " The Distinctive Character of Christianity," well worthy of being carefully studied by all who take an interest in the present state of the Church. It has occurred to me, that I cannot do better in the way of introducing the present work, than to furnish here a full abstract, or a free compressed translation rather of its valuable contents.

Christianity, in its substantial contents, has been always the same. The form of its apprehension however, on the part of the Church, has varied with the onward progress of its history. At the start, it was the fresli life of childhood, without reflection. The first germs of a Christian theology, its great leading doctrines separately taken, were gradually produced during the first centuries, in the way of apologetic controversy with surrounding errors. From the fourth century, the entire intellectual strength of the Church appears devoted to the object of settling and establishing particular doctrines ; still however only in their separate form. The Scholastic period of the middle ages, took up

* The distinguished author of the work Reformat oren vor der Reformation ; for full historical knowledge, comprehensive views, clear, calm reflection, and masterly power of representation, one of the finest living writers certainly of Germany. The article here noticed has been published also as a separate pamphlet, and seems to have attracted more than usual attention. A new work, I may add, is recently announced from the same writer under the interesting title, The Church of the Future, in which no doubt the same views are more fully exhibited. 2

Preliminary essay.

what was thus fixed in the way of faith, and laboured to reduce all to a general system. Throughout this whole progress of theological development, however, the distinctive constitution of Christianity itself, as compared with other forms of religion, can hardly be said to have come into view. Even the Reformers of the sixteenth century, thoroughly imbued as they were with its living spirit, were too fully occupied with the work of setting it free from church oppression, to bestow much reflection on this point. The question has been reserved for the Modern Period; which has felt itself urged moreover, by its philosophical and historical cultivation in particular, to direct towards it a large measure of its attention. During the last fifty years, numerous attempts have been made to determine the characteristic nature and genius of Christianity ; of very different tendency of course, reflecting always the theological life under whose influence they were formed. Thus Storr made the distinction to consist mainly in the supernatural, the miraculous, the positive, as comprehended in the Christian religion; Herder, in its character of universal humanity ; Chateaubriand, in its sublime and captivating beauty. But we owe it to the christological struggles of our own time in particular, that the specific nature of Christianity, and its inmost constitution, have begun to come more freely into the light, than ever before.

The theological position of the present time maybe considered especially favourable, for a proper appreciation of the truth in the case of the important inquiry here brought into view. It has been too common heretofore, to proceed on some particular conception of Christianity, as Primitive, Catholic, Protestant, &c. ; by which, as a matter of necessity, a single historical stadium, arbitrarily bounded according to the pleasure of the inquirer, has been made to stand for the idea of the whole ; thus causing certain phases of the system, its divinity for instance, or its humanity, its doctrinal, or its ethical, or it may be its aesthetic character only, to represent the general life of which each could be said to form but a single side. Now however, as the result of our historical cultivation itself, we stand on higher ground. We are able to take a comprehensive survey of Christianity as t

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

an organic whole, under all the aspects in which it is presented to our view, in its origin, and throughout the entire stream of its development, down to the present time. In this way, it is made much more easy than before, to reach the true life centre of the whole, and to recognize the beating heart from which all has been formed, and that still continues to animate all perpetually in its several parts.

When we speak of the distinctive character of Christianity, it implies the idea of something general as well as particular in its constitution. As general it is religion; as particular the Christian religion. But these two conceptions, in this case, are bound inseparably together. We cannot so abstract from Christianity its particular specific character, as to leave the general idea of religion behind. It must exist under the specific form which belongs to it, or it is nothing, a mere abstraction, destitute of all reality. Christianity is not religion in the first place, with something added to it to make it Christianity ; but as religion itself, it is at the same time in its inmost ground, this particular form of religion, exclusively complete in its own nature, and different in all its parts, by the spirit which pervades the whole, from every other religion. As thus individual and general at once, it claims to be the absolute truth itself ; not a religion simply, as one among many, but the one, universal, all perfect religion of humanity in its widest sense. Essential and specific here flow together, and cannot be kept asunder.

It belongs to the modern period, we have said, that it has come to exercise a conscious reflection on the nature of Christianity. This reflection has its history, its regular development from one stage still forward to another. This will be found to correspond strikingly, only with vast difference as to time, with the historical conformations under which the Christian life itself has appeared, from period to period, since its first revelation in the world. The spirit of Christianity has been carried first in a real way, by an evolution of many centuries, through the same phases, that have since been repeated, with more rapid succcession, in the modern effort to determine theoretically in what this spirit consists.

It started, as before remarked, in the character of a new life. So it meets us, with full harmony and perfection, in the person of its Founder. So it is exhibited to us more inadequately in the apostles and the apostolical churches. The mere existence of this life however was not enough. It was necessary that the Church should come to a full and free apprehension of what it comprehended. This called for a separation of its elements, involving necessarily more or less confusion and conflict and onesided action, as the only process by which it was possible, in the present state of the world, to advance from the simplicity of childhood to the consciousness of spiritual manhood. Hence the long course of development, revealed to us in Church History. In this process, the different constituent elements or forces included in Christianity could not, in the nature of the case, come in promiscuously at one time for such share of attention as they were entitled to claim. Some one interest must still take the lead of another, determined by the general character of the time ; and thus for every grand period in history we have a particular side of Christianity standing forth prominently to view as its dominant characteristic form ; till in the end, as the result of the whole process, all such single and separate manifestations may come to be united again in the full symmetrical perfection of that one glorious life to which they severally belong.

The process now mentioned began naturally with Doctrine, which it was attempted to settle first in a general way, and then in single articles. The dogma producing period extends in particular, from the fourth century on into the sixth. For this service the Grecian mind, which was then predominant in the Church, might be said to have a special vocation. With the fall of the old world, and the rise of a new life among the western nations, Christianity was required to exercise its power in a different way. It must form the manners, and regulate the life of the rude population with which it was called to deal. The main interest now accordingly was its moral authority. It became

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

in the hands particularly of the Roman Church, a system of Law, a pedagogic institute for the government of the nations. In this character however, it only made room for itself to appear, with new life, as the Gospel; a change effected chiefly through the German spirit, which included in its very constitution an evangelical or free tendency, and was gradually prepared to assert its ecclesiastical independence in this way. With the Reformation, the mind of the Church, no longer in its minority, forced its way back to the proper fountain-head of Christianity, and laid hold of it in the form of Redemption ; the justification of the sinner before God, and the principle of freedom for the consciousness of the justified subject himself in all his relations. Along with these three leading conceptions of Christianity, as doctrine, as a system of law, and as a source of redemption and spiritual freedom, we find still a fourth unfolding itself from an early period, with steadily increasing strength. It is the view, which makes religion to consist in the union of man with God, and of course finds in this the distinctive character of Christianity. It is regarded as the absolutely perfect religion, because it unites the divine and human fully as one life. This view may be traced to a remote antiquity, but comes forward more decidedly in the mysticism of the middle ages, and appears now most completely revealed in the philosophical and theological speculation of the modern time. From the first however, it has exhibited itself under two divergent tendencies, one pantheistic, and the other recognizing a personal God. Of these, the first has become widely prevalent at the present day ; but the last must be regarded of course as the only legitimate form of thinking in the case, and may be expected in the end universally to prevail.

Such are the ground types, by which the conception of Christianity has been differently moulded under different circumstances. They are characteristically represented by as many several forms of Church life. The interest of doctrine finds its proper expression in the Greek Church, self-styled significantly the Orthodox, the Church of Christian Antiquity. As a disciplinary institute, the Christian system has its fit character in the Roman Church, with its claim of universal authority, challenging for itself the