Читать книгу One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 2 - John Williamson Nevin - Страница 9

Among the attributes which Christianity has claimed to itself from the beginning, there is none perhaps more interesting and significant than that which is expressed by the title Catholic.32 It is not the product in any way of mere accident or caprice; just as little as the idea of the Church itself may be taken to have any origin of this sort. It has its necessity in the very conception of Christianity and the Church. Hence it is that we find it entering into the earliest christian confession the Apostles’ Creed, as an essential element of the faith that springs from Christ. As the mystery of the Church itself is no object of mere speculation, and rests not in any outward sense or testimony only, but must be received as an article of faith which proceeds with inward necessity from the higher mystery of the Incarnation, so also the grand distinguishing attributes of the Church, as we have them in the Creed, carry with them the same kind of inward necessary force for the mind in which this Creed truly prevails. They are not brought from abroad, but spring directly from the constitution of the fact itself with which faith is here placed in communication. The idea of the Church as a real object for faith, and not a fantastic notion only for the imagination, involves the character of catholicity, as well as that of truth and holiness, something which belongs inseparably to its very nature. To have true faith in the Church at all, we must receive it as one, holy, apostolical, and catholic. To let go any of these attributes in our thought, is necessarily to give up at the same time the being of the Church itself as an article of faith, and to substitute for it a mere chimera of our own brain under its sacred name. Hence the tenacity with which the Church has ever held fast to this title of catholic, as her inalienable distinction over against all mere parties or sects bearing the christian name. Had the title been only of accidental or artificial origin, no such stress would have been laid on it, and no such force would have been felt always to go along with its application. It has had its reason and authority all along, not so much in what it may have been made to mean exactly for the understanding in the way of formal definition and reflection, as in the living sense rather of christianity itself, the consciousness of faith here as that which goes before all reflection and furnishes the contents with which it is to be exercised.

The term catholic, it is generally understood, is of the same sense immediately with universal; and so we find some who are jealous of the first, as carrying to their ears a popish sound, affecting to use this last rather in the Creed. They feel it easier to say: “I believe in a holy universal or general church,” than to adopt out and out the old form: “I believe in the holy catholic, or in one holy catholic, church.” In this case however it needs to be borne in mind that there are two kinds of generality or universality, and that only one of them answers to the true force of the term catholic; so that there is some danger of bringing in by such change of terms an actual change of sense also, that shall go in the end to overthrow the proper import of the attribute altogether.

The two kinds of universality to which we refer are presented to us in the words all and whole. These are often taken to be substantially of one and the same meaning. In truth however their sense is very different. The first is an abstraction, derived from the contemplation or thought of a certain number of separate individual existences, which are brought together in the mind and classified collectively by the notion of their common properties. In such view, the general is of course something secondary to the individual existences from which it is abstracted, and it can never be more broad or comprehensive than these are in their numerical and empirical aggregation. It is ever accordingly a limited and finite generality. Thus we speak of all the trees in a forest, all the stars, all men, &c., meaning properly in each case the actual number of trees, stars, or men, individually embraced at the time in our general view, neither more nor less, a totality which exists only by the mind and is strictly dependent on the objects considered in their individual character. We reach the conception by a process of induction, starting with single things, and by comparison and abstraction rising to what is general; while yet in the very nature of the case the generality can never transcend the true bounds of the empirical process out of which it grows and on which it rests. But widely different now from all this is the conception legitimately expressed by the word whole. The generality it denotes is not abstract, a mere notion added to things outwardly by the mind, but concrete; it is wrought into the very nature of the things themselves, and they grow forth from it as the necessary and perpetual ground of their own being and life. In this way, it does not depend on individual and single existences as their product or consequence; although indeed it can have no place in the living world without them; but in the order of actual being they must be taken rather to depend on it, and to subsist in it and from it as their proper original. Such a generality is not finite, but infinite, that is without empirical limits and bounds; it is not the creature of mere experience, and so is not held to its particular measure however large, but in the form of idea is always more than the simple aggregate of things by which it is revealed at any given time in the world of sense.

The all expresses a mechanical unity, which is made up of the parts that belong to it, by their being brought together in a purely outward way; the whole signifies on the contrary an organic unity where the parts as such have no separate and independent existence, but draw their being from the universal unity itself in which they are comprehended, while they serve at the same time to bring it into view.33 The whole man for instance is not simply all the elements and powers that enter empirically into his constitution, but this living constitution itself rather as something more general than all such elements and powers, in virtue of which only they come to be thus what they are in fact. In the same way the whole of nature is by no means of one sense simply with the numerical aggregate, the actual all, of the objects and things that go to make up what we call the system of nature at any given time; and humanity or the human race as a whole may never be taken as identical with all men, whether this be understood of all the men of the present generation only or be so extended as to include all generations in the like outward view. Even where the thing in view may appear by its nature to exclude the general distinction here made, it will be found on close consideration that where the terms before us are used at all appropriately they never have just the same sense, but that the whole of a thing implies always of right something more than is expressed merely by its all. The whole house is not of one signification with all the house, the whole watch with all its parts, or the whole library with all the certain books that are found upon its shelves. Two different ways of looking at the object, whatever it may be, are indicated by the two terms, and also two materially different conceptions, the force of which it is not difficult to feel even where there may be no power to make it clear for thought.

And now if it be asked: which of these two orders of universality is intended by the title catholic, as applied to the Christian Church, the answer is at once sufficiently plain. It is that which is expressed by the word whole (a term that comes indeed etymologically from the same root34), and not that whose meaning lies more fitly in the word all. A man may say “I believe in a holy universal Church,” when his meaning comes merely to this at last, that he puts all Christians together in his own mind, and is willing then to acknowledge them under this collective title. The universality thus reached, however, is only an abstraction and, as such, falls short altogether of the living concrete mystery which is set before us as an object, not of reflection simply, but of divine supernatural faith, in the old ecumenical symbols. The true universality of Christ’s kingdom is organic and concrete. It has a real historical existence in the world in and through the parts of which it is composed; while yet it is not in any way the sum simply or result of these, as though they could have a separate existence beyond and before such general fact; but rather it must be regarded as going before them in the order of actual being, as underlying them at every point and as comprehending them always in its more ample range. It is the whole, in virtue of which only the parts entering into its constitution can have any real subsistence as parts, whether taken collectively or single. Such, undoubtedly, is the sense of the ancient formula, “I believe in the holy catholic church,” as it meets us in the faith of the early christian world.

But the idea of wholeness is variously determined of course by the nature of the object to which it may be applied. We can speak of a whole forest, a whole continent, or a whole planet; of a whole species, or of animated nature as a whole; of a whole man, a whole nation, a whole generation, or a whole human world. What now is the whole, in reference to which attribute of the Church here under consideration is affirmed, as a necessary article of christian faith?

The only proper answer to this question is that the attribute refers to the idea of universal humanity, or of this world as a whole. When christianity is declared to be catholic, the declaration must be taken in its full sense to affirm, that the last idea of this world as brought to its completion in man is made perfectly possible in the form of christianity, and in this form alone, and that this power therefore can never cease to work until it shall have actually taken possession of the world as a whole, and shall thus stand openly and clearly revealed as the true consummation of its nature and history in every other view.

The universalness here affirmed must be taken to extend in the end, of course, over the limits of man’s nature abstractly considered, to the physical constitution of the surrounding world (according to Rom. viii, 19–23; 2 Peter iii, 13, and many other passages in the Bible); for the physical and moral are so bound together as a single whole in the organization of man’s life, that the true and full redemption of this last would seem to require a real παλιγγενεσίᾳ or renovation35 also of the earth in its natural form. The proper wholeness even of nature itself, ideally considered, lies ultimately in the power of christianity, and can be brought to pass or made actual only by its means. But it is more immediately and directly with the world of humanity as such that this power is concerned, and such reference is to be acknowledged too, no doubt, as mainly predominant in the ecclesiastical use of the title which we have now in hand. Christianity is catholic, and claims to be so received by an act of faith, inasmuch as it forms the true and proper wholeness of mankind, the round and full symmetrical cosmos of humanity, within which only its individual manifestations can ever become complete, and on the outside of which there is no room to think of man’s life except as a failure.

There are two ways of looking at the human world, under the conception its totality. The view may regard simply the area of the world’s life outwardly considered, humanity in its numerical extent, as made up of a certain number of nations, tribes and individual men; or it may be directed more particularly to the world’s life inwardly considered, humanity in its intensive character, the being of man as a living fact or constitution made up of certain elements, laws, forces and relations, which enter necessarily into its conception aside from the particular millions of living men as such by which it may be represented at any given time. These two conceptions are plainly different; while it is equally plain, at the same time, that neither of them may be allowed with any propriety to exclude the other, but that the true and real wholeness of humanity is to be found only in the union of both. Christianity or the Kingdom of God is catholic, as it carries in itself the power to take possession of the world both extensively and intensively, and can never rest short of this end. It is formed for such two-fold victory over the reign of sin, and has a mission from heaven accordingly to conquer the universe of man’s life in this whole and entire way.

Here precisely lies the missionary nature and character of the Church. It has a call to possess the world, and it is urged continually by its own constitution to fulfil this call. The spirit of missions, wherever it prevails, bears testimony to the catholicity of christianity, and rests on the assumption that it is the only absolutely true and normal form of man’s life, and so of right should, and of necessity also at last must, come to be universally acknowledged and obeyed.

As regards the numerical view of the world, or its evangelization in extenso, this is generally admitted. All christians are ready to allow, that the world in this view belongs of right to Christ, and that it is his purpose and plan to take possession of it universally in the end as his own. The commission, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,”36 at once makes it a duty to seek the extension of the gospel among all men, and authorizes the confident expectation that this extension will finally be reached. The world needs christianity, and it can never rest satisfied to be anything less than a full complement for this need. It has regard by its very nature, not to any section of humanity only, not to any particular nation or age or race, but to humanity as such, to the universal idea of man, as this includes all kindreds, tribes, and tongues under the whole heaven. “The field is the world.”37 Christianity can tolerate no Heathenism, Mohammedanism, or Judaism at its side. It may not forego its right to the poorest or most outcast and degraded tribe upon the earth, in favor of any other religion. Wherever human life reaches, it claims the right of following it and embracing it in the way of redemption. The heathen are given to the Son for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. It is a sound and right feeling thus which enters into the cause of missions in its ordinary form, and leads the church to pray and put forth action in various ways for the conversion of the nations.

But it is not always so clearly seen, that the intensive mastery of the world’s life belongs just as truly as this extensive work to the idea of the kingdom of God, and that it ought to be therefore just as much also an object of missionary interest and zeal. The two interests indeed can never be entirely separated; since it belongs to the very nature of christianity to take possession in some way of the interior life of men, and the idea of salvation by its means unavoidably involves something more than a simply outward relation to it under any form. Hence a mere outward profession of it is felt on all hands to be not enough; although even this, as far as it goes, forms a part also of that universal homage which is its due; but along with this is required to go also some transformation of character, as a necessary passport to the heavenly world towards which it looks.

So in nominally christian lands, and within the bounds of the outward visible church itself, there is recognized generally the presence of a more inward living evangelization, a narrower missionary work which consists in the form of what is sometimes called experimental religion, and has for its object the interior form of the life it pretends to take possession of, its actual substance, rather than the mere matter of it outwardly taken. In this country particularly no distinction is more familiar, than that between the mere outward acknowledgment of christianity and the power of religion in the souls of its true subjects; although the line of this distinction is more or less vaguely and variously drawn to suit the fancy of different sects. But still it is for the most part a very inadequate apprehension after all, that seems to be taken in this way of the inner mission of christianity. Even under its experimental and spiritual aspect, the work of the gospel is too generally thought of as something comparatively outward to the proper life of man, and so a power exerted on it mechanically from abroad for its salvation, rather than a real redemption brought to pass in it from the inmost depths of its own nature. According to this view, the great purpose of the gospel is to save men from hell and bring them to heaven; this is accomplished by the machinery of the atonement and justification by faith, carrying along with it a sort of magical supernatural change of state and character by the power of the Holy Ghost, in conformity with the use of certain means for the purpose on the part of men; and so now it is taken to be the great work of the Church to carry forward the process of deliverance almost exclusively under such mechanical aspect, by urging and helping as many souls as possible in their separate individual character to flee from the wrath to come and to secure for themselves, through the grace of conversion, a good hope against the day of judgment. With many of our sects, the idea of religion (evangelical or experimental religion as they are pleased to call it), would seem to run out almost entirely into a sort of purely outward spiritualism in the form now noticed, with almost no regard whatever to the actual contents of our life as a concrete whole. Their zeal looks to the conversion of men in detail, after their own pattern and scheme of experience, as a life boat looks to the preservation of as many as possible from a drowning wreck; but beyond this seems to be in a great measure without purpose or aim. Once converted and made safe in this magical way, the mission of the Church in regard to them (unless it should be found necessary to convert them over again), is felt to be virtually at an end; and if only the whole world could be thus saved, there would be an end of the same mission for mankind altogether; we should have the millenium, and to preserve it for a thousand years38 would only need afterwards to look well to the whole conversion of each new generation subsequently, as it might come of age for such purpose.

But, alas, how far short every such view falls of the true glorious idea of the kingdom of God among men, as it meets us in the Bible and in the necessary sense of the grand mystery of the Incarnation, on which the whole truth of the Bible rests.

Even in case of the individual man, singly and separately considered, the idea of redemption can never be answered by the imagination of a merely extensive salvation, a deliverance in the form of outward power, under any view. All admit that his translation bodily as he now is in his natural state into heaven, would be for him no entrance really into a heavenly life. It is not in the power of locality or place of itself to set him in glory. Precisely the like contradiction is involved (although it may not be at once so generally plain) in the supposition of a wholly ab extra transformation of the redeemed subject into the heavenly form of existence. This at best would be the creation of a new subject altogether, as much as if a stone were raised by Divine fiat to the dignity of a living angel, and in no real sense whatever the redemption of the same subject into a higher order of life. No redemption in the case of man can be real, that is not from within as well as from without; that is not brought to penetrate the inmost ground of his being, and that has not power to work itself forth from this, outwards and upwards, till it shall take possession finally of the whole periphery of his nature, body as well as soul. This in the very nature of the case is a process, answerable to the universal character of our present life. To conceive of it as something which is brought to pass suddenly and at once, without mediation and growth, is to sunder it from the actual constitution of humanity, to place it on the outside of this, and so to reduce it, in spite of all spiritualistic pretensions the other way, to the character of a simply mechanical salvation that is at last no better than a dream. And it is of course much the same thing, to make the beginning here stand for the whole; and so to swell the starting point of the new life out of all right proportion, that instead of being, like the beginning of the natural life itself, in a great measure out of sight and knowledge (or at most as a grain of mustard the least of all seeds), it is made to stand forth to view empirically as the proper whole of salvation in this world, throwing the idea of the process which should follow completely into the shade, or turning it into dull unmeaning monotony and cant. Every such restriction of the idea of christianity to a single point of the christian life, even though it be the point where all individual salvation begins, is chargeable with deep and sore wrong to the idea as a whole, and cannot fail to be followed with disastrous consequences, wherever it may prevail, in some form of practical one-sided divergency, more or less morbidly fanatical, from the true and proper course of the new creation in Christ. The full salvation of the man turns ultimately on his full sanctification; the kingdom of heaven must be in him as a reign of righteousness, in order that it may be revealed around him as a reign of glory. It must take up his nature into itself intensively, as leaven works itself into the whole measure of meal in which it is hid, in order that it may be truly commensurate with the full volume of his being outwardly considered. The new birth is the beginning of a progressive maturation, which has its full end only in the resurrection; and this last, bringing with it the glorification of the entire man, can be rationally anticipated only as it is felt to have its real possibility in the power of such a whole renovation ripening before to this blessed result.

But to understand fully the inner mission of christianity now under consideration, we must look beyond the merely individual life as such to the moral organization of society, in which alone it can ever be found real and complete. Pure naked individuality in the case of man is an abstraction, for which there is no place whatever in the concrete human world. The single man is what he is always, only in virtue of the social life in which he is comprehended and of which he is a part. His separate existence is conditioned universally by a general human substance beyond it, from which it takes root, and derives both quality and strength. The idea of redemption then, in his case, implies of necessity far more than any deliverance that can have place for his life separately regarded. As it must lay hold of this as such in an inward way, in order to become outwardly actual, so also to do this effectually it must have power to reach and change the general substance of humanity out of which the individual life is found to spring. In other words, no redemption can be real for man singly taken, or for any particular man, which is not at the same time real for humanity in its collective view, for the fallen race as a whole. Hence it is that christianity, which challenges the homage of the world as such a system of real redemption, can never possibly be satisfied with the object of a simply numerical salvation, to be accomplished in favor of a certain number of individual men, an abstract election of single souls,39 whether this be taken as large or small, a few only or very many or even all of the human family. The idea of the true necessary wholeness of humanity is not helped at all by the numerical extent of any such abstraction. It stands in the general nature of man, the human life collectively considered, as this underlies all such distribution, and goes before it in the order of existence, filling it with its proper organic force and sense in the constitution of society. Here especially comes into view the full form and scope of the work, which must take place intensively in the life of the world before the victory of the gospel can be regarded as complete. Humanity includes in its general organization certain orders and spheres of moral existence that can never be sundered from its idea without overthrowing it altogether; they enter with essential necessity into its constitution, and are full as much part and parcel of it all the world over as the bones and sinews that go to make up the body of the outward man. The family, for instance, and the state with the various domestic and civil relations that grow out of them, are not to be considered factitious or accidental institutions in any way, continued for the use of man’s life from abroad and brought near to it only in an outward manner. They belong inherently to it; it can have no right or normal character without them; and any want of perfection in them, must even be to the same extent a want of perfection in the life itself as human, in which they are comprehended. So again, the moral nature of man includes in its very conception the idea of art, the idea of science, the idea of business and trade. It carries in itself certain powers and demands that lead to these forms of existence, as the necessary evolution of its own inward sense. Humanity stands in the activity of reason and will, under their proper general character. Take away from it any interest or sphere which legitimately belongs to such activity, and in the same measure it must cease to be a true and sound humanity altogether. No interest or sphere of this sort then can be allowed to remain on the outside of a system of redemption, which has for its object man as such in his fallen state. If christianity be indeed such a system, it must be commensurate in full with the constitution of humanity naturally considered; it must have power to take up into itself not a part of this only but the whole of it, and by no possibility can it ever be satisfied with any less universal result.

All this we say falls to the inner mission of christianity, its destination to raise humanity inwardly considered to a higher power, a new quality and tone, as well as to take possession of it by territorial conquest from sea to sea and from pole to pole. And it needs to be well understood and kept in mind, that the first object here is full as needful as the second, and belongs quite as really to the cause of the world’s evangelization. “The field is the world,”40 we may say with quite as much solemnity and emphasis in this view, as when we speak of it under the other. As the kingdom of God is not restricted in its conception to any geographical limits or national distinctions, but has regard to mankind universally; so neither is it to be thought of as penetrating the organization of man’s nature only to a certain extent, taking up one part of it into its constitution and leaving another hopelessly on the outside; on the contrary it must show itself sufficient to engross the whole. Nothing really human can be counted legitimately beyond its scope; for the grand test of its truth is its absolute adequacy to cover the field of human existence at all points, its catholicity in the sense of measuring the entire length and breadth of man’s nature. Either it is no redemption for humanity at all, or no constituent interest of humanity may be taken as extrinsical ever to its rightful domain. It will not do to talk of any such interest as profane, in the sense of an inward and abiding contrariety between it and the sacredness of religion; as though religion might be regarded as one simply among other coordinate forms of life, with a certain territory assigned to it and all beyond foreign from its control. What is really human, a constitutive part of the original nature of man, may be indeed profaned, by being turned aside from its right use and end, but can never be in itself profane. On the contrary, if religion be the perfection of this nature, all that belongs to it must not only admit but require an inward union with religion, in order to its own completion; and as christianity is the end and consummation of all religion besides, it follows that such completion in the case of every human interest can be fully gained at last only in the bosom of its all comprehensive life. The mission of christianity is not to denounce and reject any order of life belonging to primitive humanity as intrinsically hostile to God (that would be a species of Manichean41 fanaticism); nor yet to acknowledge it simply as a different and foreign jurisdiction; but plainly to appropriate every order to itself, by so mastering its inmost sense as to set it in full harmony with the deeper and broader law of its own presence. Art, science, commerce, politics, for instance, as they enter essentially into the idea of man, must all come within the range of this mission; and so far as it falls short of their full occupation at any given time with the power of its own divine principle, it must be regarded as a work still in process only towards its proper end; just as really as the work of outward missions is thus in process also, and short of its end, so long as any part of the world remains shrouded in pagan darkness. It is full as needful for the complete and final triumph of the gospel among men, that it should subdue the arts, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, &c., to its sceptre, and fill them with its spirit as that it should conquer in similar style the tribes of Africa or the islands of the South Sea. Every region of science, as it belongs to man’s nature, belongs also to the empire of Christ; and this can never be complete, as long as any such region may remain unoccupied by its power. Philosophy too, whose province and need it is to bring all the sciences to unity and thus to fathom their deepest and last sense, falls of right under the same view. Some indeed pretend, that christianity and philosophy have properly nothing to do with each other; that the first puts contempt on the second; that the second in truth is a mere ignis fatuus42 at most, which all good christians are bound to abhor and avoid. But if so, it must be considered against humanity to speculate at all in this way; whereas the whole history of the world proves the contrary; and it lies also in the very idea of science, that knowledge in this form should be sought as the necessary completion of it under other forms. To pronounce philosophy against humanity, is virtually to place science universally under the like condemnation. And so to treat it as profane or impertinent for the kingdom of God, is in truth to set all science in similar relation; the very result to which fanaticism has often shown itself prone to run. But what can be well more monstrous than that or more certainly fatal in the end to the cause of christianity? Philosophy, like science and art in other forms; is of one birth with man’s nature itself; and if christianity be the last true and full sense of this nature, it is not possible that it should be either willing or able to shut it out from its realm. We might as soon dream of a like exclusion towards the empire of China; for it is hard to see surely how the idea of humanity would suffer a more serious truncation by this, than by being doomed to fall short of its own proper actualization the other way. The world without China would be quite as near perfection, we think, as the world without philosophy. Its full redemption and salvation, the grand object of the gospel and so the necessary work and mission of christianity among men, includes it is plain both interests, and we have no right to magnify the one ever at the cost of the other.43

Such being the general nature of this missionary work intensively taken, we may see at once how far it is still from its own proper end even in the case of the nominally christian world itself. It is melancholy to think, that after nearly two thousand years which have passed since Christ came, so large a part of the human race should still be found beyond the line of christianity outwardly considered. But it is not always properly laid to heart, that the shortcoming in the other view, the distance between idea and fact within this line is, to say the least, no less serious and great. If when we think of the millions of Africa, India, and China, we must feel that the gospel thus far has been only in progress towards its full triumphant manifestation in the world; this feeling must prevail no less, when we direct our attention to the moral, scientific, and political fields, which all around us appear in like barbarous estrangement from its inward law. In this view, even more emphatically than in the other, may we not adopt the language (Heb. ii: 8): “We see not yet all things put in subjection under him”—though nothing less than such universal subjection be needed to carry out the first sense of man’s life (Gen i: 26; Ps viii: 6–8), and so nothing less can satisfy the enterprise of his redemption? Alas, how quite the reverse of this are we made to behold in every direction. Not alone do the wild powers of nature refuse to obey at once the will of the saints, but it is only a most partial dominion at best also that the christian principle has yet won for itself even in the moral world. Whole territories and spheres of human life here, have never yet been brought to any true inward reconciliation and union with the life of the Church. Romanism has pretended indeed to bring them into subjection; but so far as the pretension has yet been made good, it has been ever in a more or less outward and violent way only; whereas the problem from its very nature requires that the relation should be one of free loving harmony and not one of force. Protestantism seeing this, has in large measure openly surrendered the whole point; falling over thus to the opposite extreme; carrying the doctrine of freedom so far that it is made not only to allow but even to justify, in many cases, a full dissociation of certain spheres of humanity from the rightful sovereignty of religion. In our own time especially there is a fearful tendency at work under this form, which rests throughout on the rationalistic assumption that christianity has no right to the universal lordship of man’s life, and which aims at nothing less accordingly than the emancipation of all secular interests from its jurisdiction. It has become a widely settled maxim, we may say, that whole vast regions of humanity lie naturally and of right on the outside of the kingdom of God, strictly taken, and that it must ever be wrong to think of stretching its authority over them in any real form. Hence we find the arts and sciences to a great extent sundered from the idea of the Church as such; and more particularly politics and religion are taken to be totally separate spheres. It is coming to seem indeed a sort of moral truism, too plain for even children or fools to call in question, that the total disruption of Church and State, involving the full independence of all political interests over against the authority of the new constitution of things brought to pass in Christ, is the only order that can at all deserve to be respected as rational, or that may be taken as at all answerable to man’s nature and God’s will. And yet what a conception is that of christianity, which excludes from its organic jurisdiction the broad vast conception of the Commonwealth or State?44 We may say, if we please, that such dissociation is wise and necessary for the time being, and as an interimistic transitional stadium in a process that looks towards a far different ulterior end; but surely we are bound to pronounce it always in its own nature wrong, and false to the true idea of the gospel; something therefore which marks not the perfection, but the serious imperfection rather, of the actual state of the world. The imagination that the last answer to the great question of the right relation of the Church to the State, is to be found in any theory by which the one is set completely on the outside of the other must be counted essentially antichristian. Christianity owns the proper freedom of man’s nature under its common secular aspects, and can never be satisfied with the violent subjugation of it in a merely outward way; but it requires, at the same time, that this shall be brought to bow to its authority without force; and it can never acknowledge any freedom as legitimate and true that may affect to hold under a different form. So far short then as its actual reign in the world is found to fall of this universal supremacy over all the interests of life, it must be regarded as not having yet reached its proper end, as being still in the midst of an unfulfilled mission.

Of the two parables setting forth the progressive character of the kingdom of God, Matt xiii: 31–33, it is not unnatural to understand the first, that of the mustard seed namely, as referring mainly to its extensive growth, while the other, that of the leaven hid in three measures of meal, is taken to have respect rather to this intensive growth, by which the new divine nature of christianity is required to penetrate and pervade always more and more the substance of our general human life itself, with a necessity that can never stop till the whole mass be wrought into the same complexion. It is certain at all events, that the parables together refer to both forms of increase; for the mere taking of volume outwardly is just as little sufficient of itself to complete the conception of organic growth in the world of grace, as it is notoriously to complete the same conception in the world of nature. The taking of volume must be joined in either case with a parallel progressive taking of answerable inward form. The growth of the mustard seed itself involves this two-fold process; for it consists not simply in the accumulation of size, but in the assumption at the same time of a certain type of vegetable life throughout the entire compass of its leaves and branches. It is, however, more particularly the image of leaven that serves to bring out this last side of the subject in all its force, and that might seem accordingly to be specially designed for this purpose, in distinction from all regard to the other more outward view. The parallel, as in the case of all the N. T. parables, is no mere fancy or conceit, but rests on a real analogy, by which a lower truth or fact in the sphere of nature is found to foreshadow and as it were anticipate a higher one in the sphere of the spirit. Leaven is a new force introduced into the mass of meal, different from it, and yet having with it such inward affinity that it cannot fail to become one with it, and in doing so to raise it at the same time into its own higher nature. This however comes to pass, not abruptly nor violently, but silently and gradually, and in such a way that the action of the meal itself is made to assist and carry forward the work of the leaven towards its proper end. The work thus is a process, the growing of the new principle continually more and more into the nature of the meal, till the whole is leavened. And so it is with the new order of life revealed through the gospel. Involving as it does from the start a higher form of existence for humanity as a whole (new and yet of kindred relation to the old), it is still not at once the transformation of it, in a whole and sudden way, into such higher state. It must grow itself progressively into our nature, taking this up by degrees into its own sphere and bringing out thus at the same time its own full significance and power, in order to take possession of our nature at all in any real way. In the case of the single believer accordingly it is like leaven, a power commensurate from the first with the entire mass of his being, but needing always time and development for its full actual occupation; and so also in the case of our human life as a social or moral whole. Christianity is from the very outset potentially the reconstruction or new creation of man’s universal nature (including all spheres and tracts of existence which of right belong to this idea), just as really as a deposit of leaven carries in it from the first the power of transformation for the whole mass of meal in which it has been hid; but it is like leaven again also in this respect, that the force which it has potentially needs a continuous process of inward action to gain in a real way finally its own end. There is an inner mission in its way here, which grows with as much necessity out of its relation to the world, as the mission it has to overshadow the whole earth with its branches, and which it is urged too with just as much necessity, we may add, to carry forward and fulfil. The prayer, Thy kingdom come, has regard to the one object quite as much as to the other. This comes by the depth of its entrance into the substance of humanity, as well as by the length and breadth of it, as a process of intensification no less than a process of diffusion.

And it deserves to be well considered, that these two processes are not just two different necessities, set one by the side of the other in an external way; that they are to be viewed rather as different sides only of one and the same necessity; since each enters as a condition into the fulfilment of the other, and neither can be rightly regarded without a due regard to both. The power of christianity in particular to take possession of the world extensively, depends at last on the entrance it has gained into the life of the world intensively, so far as it may have already come to prevail. And it may well be doubted, whether it can ever complete its outward mission, in the reduction of all nations to the obedience of the gospel, without at least a somewhat parallel accomplishment of its inward mission, in the actual christianization of the organic substance of humanity, to an extent far beyond all that is now presented within the bounds of the outward Church. The leaven masters the volume of the meal in which it is set, only by working itself fully into its inmost nature. The conversion of the world in the same way is to be expected, not just from the multiplication of individual converts to the christian faith, till it shall become thus of one measure with the earth, but as the result rather of an actual taking up at the same time of the living economy of the world more and more into the christian sphere. The imagination that the outward mission here may be carried through first, and the inner mission left behind as a work for future leisure, is completely preposterous. The problems then which fall to this last have a direct and most important bearing always, on the successful prosecution also of the object proposed to the first. To make the reign of Christ more deep and inward for the life of the world, is at the same time to prepare the way correspondingly for its becoming more broad and wide. The proper solution of a great theoretic question, lying at the foundation of the christian life, and drawing after it consequences that reach over nations and centuries, may be of more account for the ultimate issues of history, than the present evangelization of a whole continent like Africa. At this very time it is of more account far, that the power of christianity should be wrought intensively into the whole civilization of this country (the weight of which prospectively no one can fully estimate); that it should have in it not merely an outward and nominal sovereignty, but be brought also fully to actuate and inform its interior collective life, filling its institutions as their very soul, and leavening them throughout into its own divine complexion; that it should solve the problem of Church and State in a really christian way, so as to bind them into one with free inward reconciliation, instead of throwing them hopelessly apart; that it should take possession truly of the art and literature of the country, its commerce and science and philosophy as well as its politics, passing by no tract of humanity as profane and yet acknowledging no tract as legitimate on the outside of its own sphere and sway: all this, we say, is an object far more near to the final redemption of the world, and of far more need at this time (if it might be accomplished), for the bringing in of the millenium, than the conversion of all India or China. The life of the Church is the salvation of the world.

From the whole subject we draw in conclusion the following reflections:

1. From the view now taken of the proper catholicism or wholeness of christianity, we may see at once that it by no means implies the necessary salvation of all men. This false conclusion is drawn by Universalists, only by confounding the idea of the whole with the notion of all; whereas in truth they are of altogether different force and sense. As hundreds of blossoms may fall and perish from a tree, without impairing the true idea of its whole life as this is reached finally in the fruit towards which all tends from the beginning, so may we conceive also of multitudes of men born into the world, the natural posterity of Adam, and coming short of the proper sense of their own nature as this is completed in Christ, without any diminution whatever of its true universalness under such form. Even in the case of our natural humanity, the whole in which it consists is by no means of one measure merely with the number of persons included in it; it is potentially far more than this, being determined to its actual extent by manifold limitations that have no necessity in itself; for there might be thousands besides born into the world, which are never born into it in fact. Why then should it be thought that the higher form of this same humanity which is reached by Christ, and without which the other must always fall short of its own destination, in order to be full and universal in its own character must take up into itself literally all men? Why may not thousands fail to be born permanently into this higher power of our universal nature, just as thousands fail of a full birth also into its first natural power, without any excluding limitation in the character of the power itself? Those who thus fail in the case of the second creation fail at the same time of course of the true end of their own being, and so may be said to perish more really than those who fall short of an actual human life in the first form; yet it by no means follows from this again that such failure must involve annihilation or a return to non-existence. It may be a continuation of existence; but of existence under a curse, morally crippled and crushed, and hopelessly debarred from the sphere in which it was required to become complete. To be thus out of Christ is for the subjects of such failure indeed an exclusion from the true and full idea of humanity, the glorious orb of man’s life in its last and only absolute and eternally perfect form; but for this life itself it involves no limitation or defect. The orb is at all points round and full.

2. As the wholeness in question is not one with the numerical all of the natural posterity of Adam, so neither may it be taken again as answerable simply to any less given number, selected out of the other all for the purpose of salvation. This idea of an abstract election, underlying the whole plan of redemption, and circumscribing consequently the real virtue of all its provisions by such mechanical limitation, is in all material respects the exact counterpart of that scheme of universal salvation which has just been noticed. It amounts to nothing, so far as the nature of the redemption is concerned that it is made to be for all men in one case and only for a certain part of them in the other. In both cases a mere notional all, a fixed finite abstraction, is substituted for the idea of an infinite concrete whole, and the result is a mechanical ab extra45 salvation, instead of a true organic redemption unfolding itself as the power of a new life from within. The proper wholeness of christianity is more a great deal than any arithmetical sum, previously made up under another form, for its comprehension and use. It implies parts of course, and in this way at last definite number and measure, and so in the case of its subjects also a veritable “election of grace;”46 but it makes all the difference in the world, whether the parts are taken to be the factoral making up the whole, or come into view as its product and growth, whether their number and measure be settled by an outward election or determined by an election that springs from within. A tree has a definite number of branches and leaves—so many, and not more nor less; but who would think of looking for the ground of this beyond the nature of the tree itself, and the conditions that rule the actual development of its life? The law of determination here is something very different, from the law that determines the imitation of a tree in wax or the composition of a watch. So the election of grace in the case of the new creation holds in Christ, and not in any view taken of humanity aside from his person.

3. The catholic or universal character of the Church thus, we may easily see farther, does not depend at any time upon its merely numerical extent, whether this be large or small. An organic whole continues the same (the mustard seed for instance) through all stages of its development, though for a long time its actual volume and form may fall far short of what they are destined to be in the end, and must be too in order to fulfill completely its inward sense. So the whole fact of christianity gathers itself up fundamentally into the single person of Christ, and is found to grow forth from this literally as its root. The mystery of the incarnation involves in itself potentially a new order of existence for the world, which is as universal in its own nature as the idea of humanity, and by which only it is possible for this to be advanced finally to its own full and perfect realization. Those who affect to find this unintelligibly mystical and transcendental, would do well to consider that every higher order of existence, even in the sphere of nature itself, carries in it a precisely similar relation to the mass of matter, surrounding it under a lower form, which it is appointed to take up and transform by assimilation into its own superior type. The Second Adam is the root of the full tree of humanity in a far profounder sense than the First; and it is only as the material of it naturally considered comes to be incorporated into this, that it can be said to be raised into the same sphere at all; its relation to it previously being at best but that of the unleavened meal to the power at work in its bosom, or that of the unassimilated element to the buried grain which is destined by means of it to wax into the proportions of a great plant or tree. So too from the root upwards, from the fountain onwards, the new order of life which we call the Church or the Kingdom of God remains throughout one and catholic. It owns no coordination with the idea of man’s life under any different form. It is the ultimate universal sense of man’s nature, the entire sphere of its perfection, the whole and only law of its final consummation. With this character however, the Church can never be content to rest in a merely partial revelation of its power among men, but is urged continually by its very nature to take actual possession of all the world, as we have already seen, both extensively and intensively. Here we have of course the idea of a process, as something involved in the very conception itself which we have in hand. As an article of faith, the catholicity of the Church expresses a present attribute in all ages; it is not drawn simply from future, as a proleptical declaration of what is to be true hereafter, though it be not true now; the whole presence of the new creation is lodged in its constitution from the start and through all centuries. But who will pretend that this has ever yet had its proper actualization in the living world? The catholic quality and force of christianity go always along with it; but innumerable hindrances are at hand to obstruct and oppose its action; and its full victory in this view accordingly, as well as in the view of its other attributes, is to be expected only hereafter. To believe in the Church as universal or catholic, it is not necessary that we should see it in full actual possession of the whole world; for when has that been the case yet, and what less would it be than the presence of the millenium in the most absolute sense? It is to believe however that the whole power by which this is to be reached is already at work in its constitution, and that its action looks and strives always towards such end, as the only result that can fairly express its necessary inward meaning and truth.

4. The catholicity of the Church, as now described, involves of course the idea also of its unity and exclusiveness. As being the true whole of humanity, it can admit no rival or co-ordinate form of life (much less any more deep and so more comprehensive than itself), and it must necessarily exclude thus as false and contrary to humanity itself all that may affect to represent this beyond its own range and sphere.

5. No other order of human life can have the same character. It is not of the nature of the civil state or commonwealth, to be thus catholic; and still less does it belong to any single constituent sphere of such political organization, separately taken. Even religion, which claims to be the last sense of man’s life from the start, and which is therefore in consistency bound and urged under all forms to assert some sort of whole or universal title in its own favor, is found to be in truth unequal always to this high pretension, till it comes to its own proper and only sufficient completion in Christ. No system of Paganism of course could ever be catholic. So a catholic Mohammedanism is a contradiction in terms. More than this, it never lay in the nature of Judaism itself, with all its truth, to take up into itself the whole life of the world. To do so, it must pass into a higher form, and so lose its own distinctive character, in Christianity. No faith could say truly, “I believe in a holy catholic Judaism”—even if all nations were brought to submit to circumcision before its eyes; for it is not in the power of Judaism as such to possess and represent in full harmony the whole idea of humanity; and what is thus not in itself possible, and so not true, can never be the object really of faith in its true form. Judaism is not the deepest power of man’s life in the form of religion, and for this reason alone it must be found in the end a comparatively partial and relative power; leaving room for a different consciousness over against itself, with a certain amount of legitimacy and right too in the face of its narrow claims, under the general form of Gentilism. This contradiction is brought to an end in Christ (the true Peace of the world as we have it Eph. ii: 14–18), in and by whom religion, the inmost fact of man’s nature, is carried at once to its last and most perfect significance, and so to the lowest profound of this nature at the same time; with power thus to take up the entire truth of it into its own universally comprehensive law; healing its disorders, restoring its harmony, and raising it finally to immortality and glory. Only what is in this way deeper than all besides, can be at the same time truly catholic, of one measure with the whole compass and contents of our universal life.

6. As no other form of religion can be catholic, so it lies in the very nature of Christianity as here shown to have this character. It must be catholic. Conceive of it, or try to exhibit it, as in its constitution less comprehensive than the whole nature of man, or as not sufficient to take this up universally into its sphere of redemption, and you wrong it in its inmost idea. It must be commensurate with the need and misery of the world as a whole, or come under its own reproach of having begun to build where it has no power to finish. Say, that it is for all mankind, except the Malay race or the many millions of China; and our whole sense at once revolts against the declaration as monstrous. Substitute for such geographical limitation the notion of an invisible line, in the form of an outward unconditional decree, setting a part of the race on one side in a state of real salvability, and another part of it on the other side in a state of necessary reprobation, the atonement being in its own nature available or of actual force in one direction only and not in the other; and the spirit of the whole New Testament again rises into solemn protest. Under the same general view again it is monstrous, as we have already seen, to conceive of a line being interposed in the way of Christianity, in the interior organism of man’s general nature itself; leaving one tract of it free to the occupancy of this new power, but requiring it to stop on the frontier limits of another (politics, trade, science, art, philosophy); as though it were deep enough and broad enough to take in a part of the great fact of humanity only, but not the whole. Or take now finally another form of limitation, not unfrequently forced on the idea of what is called the Church in these last days. Suppose a line cutting the universal process of humanity, as a fact never at rest but in motion always from infancy to old age, into two great sections; for the one of which only there is room or place in the restorational system here under consideration while the other including all infants is hopelessly out of its reach—unless death so intervene as to make that possible in another world by God’s power, which is not possible here by his grace.47 Is the thought less monstrous, we ask, than any of the suppositions which have gone before? The redemption of the gospel, as it is the absolute end of all religion besides and the full destiny of man, cannot be less broad in its own nature than the whole life it proposes to renovate and redeem. Shall there be imagined any room or place in this for the dark reign of sin—any island of the sea, any remote nation or tribe, any reprobate caste, any outside moral tract, any stadium of infancy or unripe childhood—where the reign of grace (formed to overwhelm it, Rom. v: 15–21) has no power to follow and make itself triumphantly felt? That were indeed to wrong this kingdom in its primary conception. It must be catholic, the true whole of God’s image in man, the recovery of it potentially from the centre of his nature out to its farthest periphery, in order to be itself the truth and no lie.

7. As the attribute of catholicity is distinctively characteristic of the Church as such, it follows that no mere sect or fragment of this can effectively appropriate the title. The idea of a sect is, that a part of the christian world has been brought to cut itself off from the rest of it, on the ground of some particular doctrinal or practical interest, and now affects to have within itself under such isolated view all church powers and resources, though admitting at the same time the existence of such powers & resources in other bodies also with which it owns no real church union. This is a vast contradiction from the very start, which is found to work itself out afterwards into all sorts of anomaly and falsehood. The sect virtually puts itself always into the place of the Church, and in spite of its own principle of division is then forced to arrogate to itself the proper rights and prerogatives of this divine organization, as though it were identical with its own narrow limits. In other words, it is forced to act as the whole, when it is in truth by its own confession again only a segment or part. So far as any remnant of church feeling remains (such as is needed for instance to distinguish a sect in its own mind from a voluntary confederation for religious ends), it must necessarily include in it the idea of catholicity or wholeness, as an indestructible quality of such thought; for as it lies in the very conception of a sphere to be round, so precisely does it lie in the very conception of the Church to be catholic, that is to be as universal in its constitution as humanity itself, with no tract or sphere beyond. Hence every sect, in pretending to be sufficient within itself for all church ends, practically at least if not theoretically asserts in its own favor powers and prerogatives that are strictly universal, as broad as the idea of religion itself under its most perfect and absolute form; an assumption that goes virtually to deny and set aside all similar church character in the case of other sects; for the case forbids the notion of two or more systems, separately clothed with the same universal force. Nothing short of such claim to exclusive wholeness is involved in the right each sect asserts for itself, to settle doctrines, make laws, and ply the keys, in a way that is held to be for the bounds of its own communion absolutely whole and final. Such ecclesiastical acts either mean nothing, sink into the character of idle sham, or else they are set forth as the utterances of a real church authority which is taken to be as wide as the idea of the Church itself. Every sect in this way, so far as it secretly owns the power of this idea, puts on in mock proportion at least all the airs of Rome. But now, on the other hand, the inward posture of every sect again, as such, is at war with catholicity, and urges it also to glory in the fact. The sect mind roots itself in some subjective interest, made to take the place of the true objective whole of christianity, and around this it affects to revolve pedantically as an independent world or sphere. Then it is content to allow other spheres beyond itself, under the like independent form. So its universal rights and powers as we had them just before (rights and powers that mean nothing ecclesiastically save as they are thus catholic and not partial) shrink into given bounds; often ridiculously narrow; much like the power of those old heathen deities, whose universal sway was held to stop short with the limits of the nation that worshipped at their shrines. It is a power dogmatical, diatactical, and diacritical,48 as they call it, which is of full conclusive force (the “keys of the kingdom of heaven”) for one man but not for another his next neighbor; for James but not for John; for such as have agreed to own it but not for those who have been pleased to own a different church; universal as the boundaries of the particular denomination from which it springs, the numerical all of a given sect, but of no force whatever beyond this for the mighty whole of which the sect is confessedly only a fraction and part. Here comes out of course the inward lie of the sect system, forcing it to falsify on one side what it affirms of itself on another. Sects are constitutionally uncatholic. Commonly they dislike even the word, and are apt to be shy of it, as though it smacked of Romanism, and as having a secret consciousness that it expresses a quality of the Church which their position disowns. By this however they in truth condemn themselves. It is the very curse of sect, to bear testimony here to the true idea of the Church, while it must still cry out, “What have I to do with thee thou perfection of beauty!”49 No sect as such has power to be catholic; just as little at least as Judaism has ever had any such power.

No one can say truly, “I believe in a holy catholic Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, or any like partial form of the christian profession,” as he may say, “I believe in the holy catholic Church.” For every such interest owns itself to be a part only of what the full fact of christianity includes, and is so plainly in its own nature. How then should it ever be for faith the whole? What sect of those now existing, Lutheran, German Reformed, Methodist, &c., can seriously expect ever to take up the universal world of man’s life into its bosom—unless by undergoing at last such a change in its own constitution, as shall cause the notion of sect to lose itself altogether in another far higher and far more glorious conception? No such has faith, or can have faith, in any universality of this sort as appertaining to itself; for to have it, would be to feel in the same measure a corresponding right and necessity to extend its authority over the whole world; which we know is not the case. It belongs to that which is in its own nature universal, to lay its hand imperatively on what it is found to embrace. Catholicity asks willing subjects indeed, but not optional. It says not, you may be mine, but you must. The true whole is at the same time inwardly and forever necessary. But what sect thinks of being catholic in this style? Is it not counted catholic rather in the sect vocabulary, to waive altogether the idea of any such universal and necessary right, and to say virtually: “We shall be happy to take charge of you if you see fit to be ours—but if not, may God speed you under some different conduct and care!” Not only the sect itself, but the sect consciousness also, the sect mind, is constitutionally fractional, an arbitrary part which can by no possibility feel or act as a necessary whole.

8. In this way we are brought finally to see the difference, between the true catholicism of christianity, and the mock liberalism which the world is so fond of parading on all sides in its name. This last appears in very different forms, though it ends always in the same general sense. Sometimes it openly substitutes the idea of mere humanism for that of christianity, and so prates of the universal brotherhood of man, as though this were identical with the kingdom of God, and sentimental philanthropy the same thing with religion. In another shape, it is found preaching toleration among opposing sects, exhorting them to lay aside their asperities and endeavoring it may be to bring them to some sort of free and independent confederation (such as the Peace Society50 aims at among nations), that shall prove the Church one in spite of its divisions. Then again it comes before us in the character of an open war against all sects, calling upon men to forsake them as in their very nature uncatholic; and to range themselves under the standard of general christianity, with no creed but the Bible and no rule for the use of it but private judgment. And here it is that the spirit in question often comes to look like an angel of light, by contrast with the demon of sectarianism which it pretends to cast out; so that to many it seems impossible to distinguish it from the true genius of catholicity itself, as we are taught to acknowledge this in the old church Creed. But there is just this world-wide difference between the two, that the one is positive and concrete, while the other in all its shapes is purely negative and so without real substance altogether. This is at once apparent, where mere philanthropism is made to stand for religion; the liberality it affects has indeed no limits, but it is just because the religion it represents has no contents; it is of one measure with the natural life of man, because it adds nothing to this and has no power whatever to lift it into any higher sphere.51 The same vast defect however goes along with the pseudo-catholic theory also in its other more plausible forms. The universality it proposes is not made to rest in the idea of the Church itself, as the presence of a real concrete power in the world, with capacity and mission to raise the natural life of man to a higher order (the Body of Christ) which in such view implies historical substance, carrying within itself the laws and conditions of its own being; which men may believe, but have no ability to make, more than they may pretend to make the natural world: not in this is it made to rest, we say, the indubitable sense of the old Creed, but in the conception rather of the mere outward all of a certain number of men, or parties of men in world convention represented, who consent to be of one mind in the main on the great subject of the gospel, and only need to extend such voluntary association far enough to take in finally the entire human family. All ends in an abstraction, which resolves itself at last simply into the notion of humanity in its natural character, as bringing into it no new whole whatever for its organic elevation to a higher sphere. There is no mystery accordingly ever in this pseudo-catholicism; it needs no faith for its apprehension; but on the contrary falls in readily with every sort of rationalistic tendency and habit. Sects too, that hate catholicism in the true sense, find it very easy to be on good terms with it under such mock form; the most unchurchly and uncatholic among them, taking the lead ordinarily in all sorts of buttery twaddle and sham in the name of christian union. The purely negative character of the spirit is farther shown, in its open disregard for all past history. It acknowledges no authority in this form, no confession, no creed; but will have it, that christianity is something to be produced by all men, in every age, as a new fact fresh from the Bible and themselves. But how then can it be taken to have any substance of its own in the actual world, any wholeness that is truly concrete, and not simply notional and abstract? Catholic and historical (which at last means also apostolical) go necessarily hand in hand.

J. W. N.

31. [J. W. N[evin], The Mercersburg Review 3 (January 1851) 1–26.]

32. [The term “Catholic” as applied to the church occurs first in the second century writings the Epistles of Ignatius and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. See Schaff, History of the Creeds of Christendom I.2.7.]

33. [Nevin’s distinction of all and whole may be derived from his first colleague at Mercersburg Seminary, Frederick Rauch; see Rauch’s Psychology, 281. For background to their relationship, see Hart, John Williamson Nevin, 76–7; DeBie, Speculative Theology, 48–9, 62–4.]

34. [“Catholic” is derived from the Greek phrase καθ' ὅλου, “on the whole” (“catholic, adj. and n.”. OED Online. June 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/28967).]

35. [This is the word used in Matt 19:28: “ . . . at the renewal of all things (NRSV).”]

36. [Mark 16:15.]

37. [Matt 13:38.]

38. [Until approximately the Civil War, most Protestantism was “postmillennial”: the church would bring about Christ’s millennial reign on earth through its own activity, and Christ would return at its end (thus “post-”). For this concept’s relation to Nevin’s own thought, see Layman, general introduction to Born of Water and the Spirit, 29.]

39. [Nevin here begins a critique of “election” as an absolute decree selecting a specific, limited number of individuals for salvation. See “Hodge on Ephesians” below for his detailed critique of scholastic predestinarianism.]

40. [Matt 13:38.]

41. [Manicheanism held that that human soul had been contaminated and darkened by matter, and must be freed through an esoteric knowledge of divine illumination.]

42. [Lit., “foolish fire,” e.g., flitting phosphorescent lights, and thus something that misleads; an illusion.]

43. [Nevin would become less confident of the place of science in the redemption of humanity over the next decade. See “Jesus and the Resurrection,” 151, and “Nature and Grace,” 504–5.]

44. [See DeBie, Speculative Theology, 72 for the problem of the state raised by Hegelianism; for Nevin’s position see Borneman, Church, Sacrament, and American Democracy, 121–24. Borneman quotes the important text in Nevin, “Early Christianity” in Catholic and Reformed, 299.]

45. [Literally “from outside”.]

46. [Rom 11:5.]

47. [The argument of this paragraph is that catholicity transcends all apparent divisions in humanity: so far he has mentioned geographical separation, an “unconditional decree” that separates the elect from the non-elect, and a dichotomy between religion and culture or politics. In this obscure sentence, the hypothetical division appears to be between infancy and adulthood. Nevin’s point would in that case be that infants are just as much in the “reach” of Christianity as adults. One can find a fuller argument for this claim in “Noel on Baptism,” 98–101.]

48. [This three–fold power of the church is a commonplace in Reformed dogmatics: see T. E. Peck, Notes on Ecclesiology, 120 citing Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, Locus 18, Q. 29, ¶ 5 (vol. 3 [Geneva: Samuelem de Tournes, 1686], 308). The three powers are interpreting scripture, creating “rules of order,” and church discipline: Forbes, “Christ the Head of the Church,” in Lectures on the Headship of Christ, 24–5.]

49. [Possibly an allusion to Lam 2:15–16; see also Ps 50:2.]

50. [On May 8, 1828, William Ladd (1778–1841) brought together existing peace groups into The American Peace Society. Its stated purpose was to “promote permanent international peace through justice; and to advance in every proper way the general use of conciliation, arbitration, judicial methods, and other peaceful means of avoiding and adjusting differences among nations, to the end that right shall rule might in a law-governed world (“American Peace Society Records,” http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG001–025/DG003APS.htm).”]

51. [For later denunciations of “natural philanthrophism” and “merely humanitarian praxis,” see “The Internal Sense of Holy Scripture,” 9, 37–8 and “Once for All,” 124.]