Loraine Boettner on Providence

Dr. David T. Crum is an Assistant Professor of History at Truett-McConnell University. In addition to the B.S. degree, Dr. Crum holds two M.A. degrees (Theological Studies and History, respectively) and the earned Doctor of Philosophy degree in Historical Theology.

The very idea of providence separates deists and theists. Even more, within the Reformed community, the term providence holds two distinct titles: (1) a doctrine that explains God’s involvement in history and current events and (2) a name given to the Lord Himself. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson regularly referred to God as Providence, as have past American leaders such as George Washington and Calvin Coolidge.

            In the Reformed tradition, Loraine Boettner, a highly respected theologian of the 20th century, made considerable contributions to the study of providence. It is clear that once Christians understand providence correctly, their recollection of the past and comprehension of current events change. What role does man play in creation? Do events occur by chance? Providence holds the answers to all these questions. Throughout history, God’s providence has revealed His will.

Defining Providence

            Inarguably, Loraine Boettner’s most notable work was his book, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (1932). What began as a student’s theological research project became a top-selling analysis of the Reformed faith. In this classic, chapter five deals specifically with the idea of providence.

            Boettner wrote, “The Scriptures very clearly teach that all things outside of God owe not merely their original creation, but their continued existence, with all their properties and powers, to the will of God… All things, both in heaven and earth, from the seraphim down to the tiny atom, are ordered by His never-failing providence.”[1] Boettner’s understanding of the doctrine is in line with the great reformers such as Luther and Calvin, but also with prominent members of the early church. John Calvin taught:

“There is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed... Let the reader remember that the providence we mean is not one by which the Deity, sitting idly in heaven, looks on at what is taking place in the world, but one by which he, as it were, holds the helm, and overrules all events. Hence his providence extends not less to the hand than to the eye.”[2]

Thomas Aquinas argued, “For we say more appropriately that a blacksmith rather than his hammer makes a knife. God is also directly related to all the effects insofar as he is intrinsically the cause of existing and preserves all things in existing.”[3] Boettner’s reliance on Charles Hodge’s explanation appears to model Calvin’s and Aquinas’ understanding:

“He [God] is present in every blade of grass… present also in every human soul, giving it understanding, endowing it with gifts, working in it both to will and to do. The human heart is in His hands, and he turneth it even as the rivers of water are turned.”[4]

Although seemingly simple yet complex to fully understand, the complete comprehension of life’s multifaceted nature, encompassing everything from mankind’s existence to earthly weather patterns, is under God’s control. Boettner concluded, “God is no mere spectator of the universe He has made, but it everywhere present and active, the all-sustaining ground, and all-governing power of all that is.”[5]

Providence in Daily Affairs

Embracing the idea and reality of providence enables complete submission to God’s sovereignty and reliance on Him, knowing that in the most pressing times, the Creator carries out His divine plan. In death, for instance, Boettner taught, “Some speak of the problem of death. For the Christian, there should be no problem of death than there is a problem of faded flowers or of a clouded sky. God has made this so clear in His word that there can be no grounds to question it.”[6] A person’s time of death and circumstances of their departure are at the mercy and will of God.

            Boettner’s teachings make it clear that submitting to providence further assists the believer in respecting God’s authority and remaining as a submission mechanism for fallen creation. Christians have always found themselves praying for guidance, health, and a deliverance from evil. This practice has accompanied the church from its existence and was a direct command from the Lord Himself (John 14:13). Biblical figures such as David and Daniel likewise relied on constant petitions to God.

            Providence plays a part in hard times and inexplicable events—both joyful and blessed. Boettner argued every believer knows there have been times when the Divine intervened in the most intimate manner. Boettner taught, “God is no less sovereign in the distribution of His favors. He does what He will with His own. To some He gives riches, to others honor, to others health, to others certain talents for music, oratory, art, finance, statesmanship, etc.”[7] God’s plan includes all creation, believers or not, regardless of their acceptance. Boettner wrote, “Individual personalities and second causes are fully recognized, not as independent of God, but as having their proper place in His plan.”[8]

            In another work titled Studies in Theology (1947), Boettner went further, “There is another class of events recorded in Scripture which may be more accurately referred to not as miracles but as extraordinary providences.”[9] Adding, “the importance of these events is not lessened by their being put in a separate class, for while not strictly miraculous, they do give clear evidence of Divine intervention.”[10] Instances like Daniel’s preservation in the lions’ den demonstrate God’s deliberate and purposeful involvement in creation to achieve His will. Boettner continued:

“There was nothing miraculous for instance in the locust plagued considered in itself, for such plagues have continued to visit Egypt even to the present day; but when the plague came at the exact time that Moses as the Lord’s spokesman had said that it would come, and departed at the appointed time, or when the quails came in great numbers to the right place and at the very time Moses had promised or when the walls of Jericho fell at the appointed time, then, these events, taken in connection with the word of the prophet, became as clear evidence of Divine intervention as if they had been pure miracles.”[11]

The terms miraculous and divine are relatively interchangeable. The point is that God was at work. Many accept divine intervention in life, irrespective of social standing or status. President Calvin Coolidge wrote in his autobiography:

“Any man who has been placed in the White House can not feel that it is the result of his own exertions or his own merit. Some power outside and beyond him becomes manifest through him. As he contemplates the workings of his office, he comes to realize with an increasing sense of humility that he is but an instrument in the hands of God.”[12]

Coolidge interestingly aligned with Scripture, notably Romans 13 and Colossians 1:16, in surrendering to divine providence. Coolidge’s perspective, in line with Boettner’s teachings, sees government and appointed officials as under God’s authority. Although God’s plans are often difficult to understand, Boettner saw providence as the essence of God’s character and attributes. Not only do the doctrine and teachings of providence call for a Creator and active God, but they also argue for world events to be at His mercy.

Providence in History

            Aside from personal attributes and daily life, divine providence also relates to history and its understanding of historical events. Here, Boettner excels at giving God the proper acclamations of not only the Savior of the world but the Creator of all historical events. Quoting B.B. Warfield, he wrote, “Every historical event is rather treated as an item in the orderly carrying out of an underlying Divine purpose; and the historian is continually aware of the presence in history of Him who gives even the lightning a charge to strike the mark (Job 36:32).”[13]

            Plainly, if one seeks to understand God, one should learn history and, notably, the past events of the church. Boettner wrote, “God speaks to us through the developments of Church History which we have seen take place during the past nineteen centuries, in which we have witnessed the transformation of individuals, and of whole nations through the power of the Gospel, a marvelously rich proof of His guidance of His people.”[14]

            Boettner’s admiration for the Revolutionary cause was apparent. He noted, “History is eloquent in declaring that American democracy was born of Christianity and that Christianity was Calvinism. The great Revolutionary conflict, which resulted in the formation of the American nation, was carried out mainly by Calvinists.”[15] However, Boettner named other nations, such as England and Australia, historically blessed with freedom and linked to democracy. He argued, “Some [people] are placed in Christian lands where they receive all the benefits of the Gospel others live and die in the darkness of heathenism.”[16]

Life’s events are part of God’s ultimate plan, not chance. Boettner’s logic supports the analysis of Israel’s mere existence, the success of the Reformation, and the flourishing of Christianity in lands that once embraced or allowed its teachings. From Great Britain to the United States, a peculiar relationship between Christianity and freedom and democracy has existed.

            Although some question its historical accuracy, the Roman Emperor Constantine opened up the empire to Christianity, as historians argue his visual observation of a cross before a successful battle victory altered his thoughts on Christ and the religion itself. In the same manner, General George Washington claimed a triumph of survival, escaping in clouds of mist at Long Island, in which British forces could have destroyed his entire army. Similar accounts hold true for British troops being rescued in clouds of invisibility from their retreat at Dunkirk during World War II.

God’s involvement in history is clear regardless of the situation or past historical account. Yet, for all the moments of triumph, the critic might ask, what about the injustices done in history, both in the past and present times? Boettner eloquently answers, “The answer to the sins and injustices and unrewarded services of this life is a future life in which there must be a “judgment to come,” such as that which terrified Felix when Paul preached to him (Acts 24:25), a future life in which righteousness and holiness will be the order of all things… No just God could allow a system in which so much evil goes unpunished and so much good unrewarded.”[17] Going further, he explained deliverance from evil found even in death, “Undoubtedly, death has been for many the one way of release from burdens and pains that had become too great to be borne, as with the hopelessly incurable and the aged. For others it has meant escape from suffering or disappointment that would have come to them in later life.”[18] 

Understanding divine providence acknowledges God’s proper role in creation. For every blessing, trial, or tribulation, there remains a purpose for life’s events. God’s plan is carried out through His creation, which is made in His image. Boettner’s understanding and teachings of providence sum up all aspects of life whether or not one acknowledges the Lord as God matters not, as each soul is a part of God’s plan in earthly living.

Free Will and Providence

Skeptics might argue that adhering to complete providence interferes with the concept of free will or human freedom. Boettner sees no contradiction, “All that we need to know is that God does govern His creatures and that His control over them is such that no violence is done to their natures. Perhaps the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom can best be summed up in these words: God so presents the outside inducements that man acts in accordance with his own nature, yet does exactly what God has planned for him to do.”[19]

Boettner, like Calvin, did not deny free will. However, one must connect a proper understanding of human freedom to God’s sovereignty and plan for creation. He explained, “While the act remains or less to the predisposing agency and efficacy of divine power exerted in lawful ways… His [God’s] will for the course of events is the primary cause and man’s will is the secondary cause; and the two work together in perfect harmony.”[20]

            Mankind’s role in creation is always at the providence of God, “His [God’s] decree does not produce the event; but only renders its occurrence certain, and the same decree which determines the certainty of the action at the same times determines the freedom of the agent in the act.”[21] Perhaps Coolidge best illustrated the role of human freedom in relation to providence when he wrote, “As he [the President] contemplates the workings of his office, he comes to realize with an increasing sense of humility that he is but an instrument in the hands of God.”[22] Here, Boettner agreed, “God controls our actions so that they are certain although we act freely.”[23] Quoting Coolidge, mankind is an instrument at the hands and will of God. Concluding, Boettner emphasized:

“The Scriptures teach that Divine sovereignty and human freedom co-operate in perfect harmony; that while God is the sovereign Ruler and primary cause, man is free within the limits of his nature and is the secondary cause; and that God so controls the thoughts and wills of men that they freely and willingly do what He has planned for them to do.”[24]

Boettner used the words “sovereignty” and “providence.” Though similar, sovereignty is God’s rule and authority over all things. Providence inarguably derives from God’s sovereignty in an act to accomplish His will. God certainly uses mankind in every process and actual occurrence; all things align with His plan.

Conclusion

            The concept of providence has existed since the days of Moses, with past U.S. presidents noting God’s involvement in daily affairs. Providence occurs in intimate ways, from deemed miracles to tragic events that lead to sorrow. Regardless of the outcome, God accomplishes His will.

In history, God imprinted His hand on His creation, providing examples for future generations, which each offspring often seems to forget. Whether it is a hurricane, famine, or a great war, God’s involvement in mankind is absolute and dictated solely by His will. Providence brings forth wisdom and understanding in the Lord, but it also requires the believer to exercise humility and a humble spirit toward the Savior and Lord Himself. Loraine Boettner’s teachings on providence sum up his theology and understanding of all history, which states that nothing occurs in life outside the will of God.

Although man may possess freedom of will, the Creator has designed every creature with predetermined outcomes. Free will exists for Boettner but in the nature of God’s intended purpose of any said event. God’s sovereignty correlates with providence; God’s direct role in all affairs shows God determines and has dominion and authority over all things.

[1] Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1932), 35.

[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 116.

[3] Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 106.

[4] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 36.

[5] Ibid., 37.

[6] Loraine Boettner, Immortality, (Louisville: GLH Publishing, 2020), 30.

[7] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 36.

[8] Ibid., 35.

[9] Loraine Boettner, Studies in Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1947), 64.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, (Chicago: Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1929), 235.

[13] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 37.

[14] Boettner, Studies in Theology, 66.

[15] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 384.

[16] Ibid., 36.

[17] Boettner, Immortality, 60.

[18] Ibid., 30.

[19] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 38.

[20] Ibid., 209.

[21] Ibid., 212.

[22] Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, 235.

[23] Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 212.

[24] Ibid., 222.

"God’s Electing Love and Mercy": 19th Century Presbyterians and the Question of Infant Salvation

Dr. Miles Smith IV is an adjunct instructor at Liberty University Online. His teaching generally focuses on the Nineteenth Century United States, but he also enjoys lecturing on Europe and Latin America.

Ecumenical movements in North American Protestantism during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have often led Presbyterians to rhetorically negotiate the sacramental understandings associated with the Westminster Standards. Perhaps more ominously, Reformed thinkers and pastors have downplayed historic Reformed understandings traditionally meant to bring solace—both pastoral and sacramental—to the people of God.

People in the pews of Reformed churches in 2019 might be quick to assume that their forbears were stern, or perhaps formalistic, or too tied to the Standards to be missionally or pastorally effective. What they are less likely to assume is the remarkable catholicity of historic Reformed tradition, and the rich theology offered to those in grief. Remarkable advances in medicine and associated technology has to some degree lessened the immediate effects of the curse, but death still roams human existence. Tragically, death often claims infant children of Christian parents.

The need to declare the capaciousness of God’s grace typified Presbyterian polemics and preaching in the nineteenth century. William D. Smith’s What is Calvinism? addressed Presbyterians’ belief in the salvation of infants directly. He noted that a popular slander against Reformed theology leveled by Wesleyans was the idea that human depravity automatically consigned infants to hell. Smith hotly rejected that idea entirely.  Reformed Christians believed that infants were born with the same damning sin nature as adults, but nonetheless they loudly “believed in the salvation of infants.” “It was not because we believed them holy, and without sin; but, because we believed they were sinful, and would be saved, through the imputed righteousness of Christ.” Smith rightly charged Wesleyans evangelists with obfuscating statements in the Westminster Standards regarding Presbyterianism’s belief in God’s grace to infants.[1]

Charles Hodge argued passionately that not only were the infants of Christian saved, but all infants were. “All who die in infancy are saved. This is inferred from what the Bible teaches of the analogy between Adam and Christ.” To those who demurred, he wrote:

We have no right to put any limit on these general terms, except what the Bible itself places upon them. The Scriptures nowhere exclude any class of infants, baptized or unbaptized, born in Christian or in heathen lands, of believing or unbelieving parents, from the benefits of the redemption of Christ. All the descendants of Adam, except Christ, are under condemnation; all the descendants of Adam, except those of whom it is expressly revealed that they cannot inherit the kingdom of God, are saved.

Hodge’s argument did not create sensation in the era. His argument for accepting Roman Catholic baptism proved more controversial at the time, especially with his southern rival, James Henley Thornwell.[2]

Perhaps the most famous southern divine, Thornwell’s famous admonition to treat children as unregenerate until they publicly communed has sometimes been held up as evidence that southern Presbyterians did not believe in infant salvation. The accusation is not entirely unfounded. Thornwell’s ambiguous treatment of baptism often hewed away from historic Calvinism and his fellow southern divines, and his peculiar view of baptism was no exception. Yet even Thornwell believed that infants on some level had a special relationship to the Covenant of Grace.[3]

Church historians’ tendency to treat Thornwell as representative of southern Presbyterianism often overshadowed majority opinion among other religious intellectuals of the time. Thomas Smyth, pastor of Charleston’s Second Presbyterian Church and a close friend of Thornwell, argued that infant salvation was the historic position of Calvinist churches. Likewise he saw the doctrine as a powerful affirmation of the pastoral and soteriological superiority of Reformed theology. He penned his Solace for Bereaved Parents in 1848, a tome over 300 pages long filled with declarations of God’s grace to infants. His serious scholarly training did not cloud his pastoral purpose. Parental grief was natural, he wrote, and should not be accused of excess, “Your affliction is great. Your heart is left lonely and desolate. Its strings are broken. That joy which had swallowed up all remembrance of the hours of solicitude and pain, is now turned into melancholy sadness.” The joyous “current of affection and gladness which had flowed out upon the object of your regard is turned back upon the soul —its channels are dried up, and its fountain gone.” Smyth understood that “the grief of a bereaved parent can only be known by those who have endured it.” Smyth saw this grief as natural, but believed Calvinism provided substantive hope for an eternal reunification of parent and child. The very aspects of Calvinist eucharistic thought that Roman Catholics and even Lutherans found most objectionable, Smyth saw as announcing the kingdom coming even to the infant dead. [4]

Smyth particularly appealed to the Westminster standards, particularly the Confession of Faith. Twentieth-century Reformed ministers affirm Westminster Confession of Faith 10.3 and its declaration that “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the spirit.” Yet many have tended to caution against presumption that dead infants of covenant parents were among the elect.

Smyth, like William Smith, Charles Hodge, and the eighteenth-century church of Scotland, flatly rejected this circumspection as extra-scriptural. Smyth noted that in his own time the doctrine of salvation for dead infants of Christian parents was “universally believed by Presbyterians, and those who hold to the doctrine of election, that all dying infants are included among the elect, are made heirs of grace, and become members of the kingdom of heaven.” He noted that he was “not acquainted with any who hold an opposite sentiment.” He admitted that “possibly, when the doctrine is extended to the infants of Heathen parents, some might not be prepared fully to concur in it. But even then, he declared: “that there is ground from Scripture to believe that even they are included in the promises of Divine mercy, and are…all undoubtedly saved, is, I have no doubt, an opinion to which Presbyterians will, generally, subscribe.”[5]

Denial of infant salvation, Smyth warned, placed those of that opinion in the same camp with “some Calvinists, in common with many Arminians of former days…and the Roman Catholic Church.” Smyth addressed particularly the false notion that Presbyterians believed in infant damnation. Smyth noted that far from denying infant salvation, Calvin and his successors rescued the doctrine of God’s voluminous grace and that it extended to dead and unbaptized infants. “The opinion of Calvinists,” Smyth proclaimed, “is now universally in favour of the hope that all children dying in infancy are saved through the merits of Christ's death, applied by the Holy Ghost.” More importantly, this facet of Calvinist theology was not a modern innovation, but traced its roots to the beginning of Calvin’s writings in the Reformation. Calvin, noted Smyth, “was among the very first of the reformers to overthrow the unchristian and most horrible doctrine of the Romish and High-church divines, that no unbaptized infant can be saved.” [6]

Calvin’s intellectual assault on the errors of Medieval Roman Catholicism made infant salvation not merely ornamental, but crucial. Smyth refuted modern caution that the Westminster divines treaded softly on infant salvation. The Standards, he wrote, “wisely, charitably, and scripturally concludes, that this grace is co-extensive with God's electing love and mercy, and is bestowed upon the objects of that love, whether they are removed from this world in a state of infancy, or of maturity.” The Confession “overthrows the doctrine of Romanists, High Church Episcopalians, and others, who teach that this grace of salvation, by the renewing of the Holy Ghost, is tied down and limited—first, by what they most vainly and arrogantly call the only true Church, to wit, the Romanist or Episcopal Churches, and secondly by the ordinances of baptism as administered in these churches.”[7]

Nineteenth-century Presbyterians were, in many ways, more comfortable with grace extending to infants than modern Reformed thinkers. The historical record points to a consensus on infant salvation that stretched across cultural, geographic, and social lines. Smyth and Hodge, for example, disagreed on aspects of churchmanship, but they agreed that Westminster Confession of Faith 10.3 decidedly affirmed Smyth’s argument. Smyth said succinctly, and in bold type, that “Calvinists now universally agree in believing, THAT THERE IS EVERY REASONABLE GROUND TO HOPE THAT ALL INFANTS DYING IN INFANCY ARE INCLUDED IN THE DECREE OF ELECTION AND ARE MADE PARTAKERS OF EVERLASTING LIFE.”[8]

—————

[1] William D. Smith, What is Calvinism? (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1854), 9-10. This book can be found on the Log College Press website here.

[2] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895), 1:26-27. This book can be found on the Log College Press website here.

[3] James Henley Thornwell, “The Revised Book Vindicated,” in James B. Adger and John L. Girardeau, eds., Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1871), 4:363-364. This book can be found on the Log College Press website here.

[4] Thomas Smyth, Solace for Bereaved Parents, or Infants Die to Live (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), 1. This book can also be found in Volume 10 of Smyth’s Complete Works on the Log College Press website here.

[5] Smyth, Solace, 26. Emphasis his.

[6] Smyth, Solace, 26.

[7] Smyth, Solace, 36.

[8] Smyth, Solace, 36.

Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the Elder Question

Caleb Cangelosi is an Associate Pastor at Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church in Ridgeland, MS, and the Publisher of Log College Press. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University (BS), Reformed Theological Seminary (MDiv), and Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary (ThM). The following is adapted from his ThM thesis, which was on the controversy over the call to the ministry in the 19th century Southern Presbyterian Church, and can be found here.

Across the country this year in the denomination in which I serve (the Presbyterian Church in America), men will be set apart to the work of gospel ministry by the hands of other ministers (teaching elders) and the hands of ruling elders laid upon them. More than likely, no one present at these ordination services will think it a strange thing for ruling elders to participate in the ordination of a teaching elder. Yet a quick journey back to America in the 1840s reminds us that the PCA ought not to take for granted the practices and privileges of her current polity.

The “elder question” arose in January of 1841, just a few years after the Old School and New School parties within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America divided in the face of their ecclesiological and theological differences.[1] From that split of 1837 until the outbreak of Civil War when they were rent asunder sectionally, the Old School Presbyterians, like other denominations of that era, were beset by differing opinions in the areas of church polity.[2] The elder controversy began when the Synod of Indiana’s decision to allow ruling elders to take part in the ordination of ministers was challenged in the religious press. Robert Jefferson Breckinridge engaged the issue, contending for the elder’s right to lay hands on ministers being ordained.[3] At the 1841 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, at which Breckinridge was elected Moderator, the Synod of Indiana put forward an overture recommending that “the question of the office of ruling Elders in ordination, be sent down to the Presbyteries.” The overture was taken up but indefinitely postponed.[4]

In 1842 the matter came back to the Assembly, this time as a communication from the Western District, a presbytery of the Synod of West Tennessee.[5] The Assembly approved the unanimous recommendation of the Committee of Bills and Overtures: that the church should adhere “to the order, and until recently, the uniform practices of our Church on this subject, viz. to allow preaching elders or bishops only to engage in that service [i.e., the ordination of ministers].”[6] The battle began to be waged even more fervently in the lower church courts and in the press, particularly in the Philadelphia Presbyterian, Breckinridge’s Spirit of the XIX Century, and Princeton Seminary’s Biblical Repertory. The West Lexington Presbytery sent a resolution to the 1843 General Assembly, declaring that it believed ruling elders did have the right to unite with ministers in the ordination of ministers. After much debate over several days, the Assembly, by a 138-9 vote, judged, “that neither the Constitution, nor the practice of our Church, authorizes Ruling Elders to impose hands in the ordination of Ministers.” Breckinridge voted with what was a definite minority. At the same Assembly, it was resolved that ruling elders did not have to be present to constitute a quorum of a Presbytery, but “any three ministers of a Presbytery, being regularly convened, are a quorum competent to the transaction of all business, agreeably to the provision contained in the Form of Government, Chap. x. Sec. 7.”[7] On this matter the vote was closer, 83-35, but Breckinridge still found himself in the minority.

At this point Breckinridge and James Henley Thornwell began to correspond regularly about the unfolding controversy. Thornwell wrote “The Ruling Elder a Presbyter,” published first in Breckinridge’s Spirit of the XIX Century. That fall, Breckinridge delivered two arguments before the Synod of Philadelphia: “Presbyterian Government not a Hierarchy, but a Commonwealth” and “Presbyterian Ordination not a Charm, but an Act of Government.”[8] These matters came before the 1844 General Assembly by way of an appeal and complaint by Breckinridge against the Synod of Philadelphia, and overtures from the Presbytery of Cincinnati, Transylvania, South Alabama, and East Alabama, asking the Assembly to reverse its 1843 decision. The Assembly judged that Breckinridge’s complaints and appeals were not permitted by the Constitution to come before the Assembly, and answered the overtures in the negative.[9]

With this decision, the matter was settled with respect to the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Breckinridge was content to “rest his case with providence after continual defeat,” and “never again advocated the divine right of elders in the church courts.”[10] But he never changed his mind about the principles involved:

I thought it my duty to submit unreservedly to the decision of the minority of that body, and other Presbyters, both Preaching and Ruling then present, whose opinions on these great questions coincided, in general, with my own; the line of conduct which it behooved us to adopt in such a case. Their judgment was clear and unanimous, that we were bound, in conscience, to adhere to our principles, to promote them as we had opportunity, and faithfully testifying for them, to await the developments of God’s providence.[11]

 What were the principles for which Breckinridge contended in this debate? Underlying his convictions that ruling elders should be allowed to impose hands in the ordination of ministers, and that ruling elders are necessary for a quorum of a Presbytery, were several key beliefs. First, he held that ruling elders were a constituent part of Presbytery, and therefore had a right to be present at Presbytery, and participate in the act of ordination, which was the work of Presbytery.[12] Second, he held that making ruling elders unnecessary for a quorum or ordination struck at the heart of Presbyterian church government. The representative nature of ruling elders, writes Breckinridge

is an essential element of Presbyterianism: destroy this, and the entire system perished. This is the element that distinctly separates it from prelacy on the one hand, and congregationalism on the other. Admit the principle that the ministry may, without the presence of any representative of God's people, transact the business of the people, and you lay our glorious system of representative republicanism in ruins: and over those ruins you may easily pave a highway to prelacy and popery.[13]

 There were many more arguments made by Breckinridge, Thornwell, and those on their side, but most fundamentally, their views on the ruling elder flowed out of their belief that Presbyterianism was jure divino, by divine right: “[T]he order of [Christ’s] house is not a question left to us – but it is one distinctly settled by himself.” Jesus had prescribed the government for his church:

The Lord Jesus Christ is King in Zion; the whole model and working of his kingdom are matters of revelation; the complete execution of the mission of his church is absolutely impossible, until she puts away all carnal devices and puts on the whole armour of light; and we have no more warrant from God to make a church government for him and in his name – than to make any other part of his religion. It is idle to talk about church government being jure divino, in its great principles and not in its details; or as they say, in the abstract and not in the concrete. The truth is, it is both: for not only are the great principles laid down for us, but the officers and courts are named; the nature and duties of the one, the qualifications, vocation, and powers of the other, are set forth; the relations of all the parts to each other and to the whole are precisely set forth. A government, in general – the kind of government in particular – the officers and courts in special – their duties and powers in detail: this is what God has set before us, by revelation, for the Christian church.[14]

 From these principles, Breckinridge argued for the rights of ruling elders.

Ironically, it would be the Southern Presbyterian Church after the Civil War which would finally codify the position of Breckinridge on ruling elders. This issue no longer agitates the church, as the Presbyterian churches in America have essentially settled the question satisfactorily for themselves in a variety of directions. Yet engaging the debate of the 1840s is important and helpful as we continue to think through the role of ruling elders in the life of the church and the true nature of Presbyterianism.

               1. For more on the Old School – New School split, see George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (1970; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003); James Wood, Old and New Theology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845); and Peter J. Wallace, “The Bond of Union: The Old School Presbyterian Church and the American Nation, 1837-1861” (PhD diss., Notre Dame University, 2004), accessed February 1, 2018, http://www.peterwallace.org/dissertation.

                2. See Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1963), 1:510ff.; Luder G. Whitlock, Jr., “Elders and Ecclesiology in the Thought of James Henley Thornwell,” Westminster Theological Journal 37, no. 1 (Fall 1974): 45. For Breckinridge’s views on the connection between the division of 1837 and the ruling elder controversy, see Edgar Caldwell Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” Affirmation 6, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 73-74.

                3. Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 76. Mayse opines, “Although it would not be fair to call the elder question ‘a controversy of Breckinridge’s personal creation’ [quoting Elwyn Smith, The Presbyterian Minister in American Culture, 176], it is certain that the dispute would never have achieved its prominence and bitterness had the Baltimore pastor decided to confine his polemical attacks to the Catholics and abolitionists.” Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 76. For more on the ruling elder controversy, see Benjamin Morgan Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (1875; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), 251ff.; Whitlock, “Elders and Ecclesiology in the Thought of James Henley Thornwell,” 44-56; Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 1:516ff.; Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 73-88; Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge: American Presbyterian Controversialist” (ThD diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1974), 356-439; John Lloyd Vance, “The Ecclesiology of James Henley Thornwell” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1990), 194-208; and Mark R. Brown, ed., Order in the Offices (Duncansville, PA: Classic Presbyterian Government Resources, 1993), especially the article therein by Iain Murray, “Ruling Elders – a Sketch of a Controversy,” 157-168.

                4. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1841), 447. Mayse writes that Breckinridge was not in the Assembly hall when these votes were taken, but when he returned he was able to convince the members to reconsider their vote. Due to time constraints, the issue was referred to the next Assembly. Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 77. I was not able to find these actions in the Minutes of the Assembly, but it is possible that Breckinridge mentions them in the newspaper articles he published during the controversy, to which I do not have access. Cf. Palmer, Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, 254.

                5. Whitlock, “Elders and Ecclesiology in the Thought of James Henley Thornwell,” 46; Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 77-80.

                6. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1842), 16.

                7. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1843), 183, 196, cf. 190.

  8. This article can be found in Thornwell, Collected Writings (1873; repr., Vestavia Hills, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2004), 4:115ff. Breckinridge’s addresses were subsequently published together with a sermon that catalyzed another controversy over the call to the ministry, “The Christian Pastor, One of the Ascension Gifts of Christ.” See Robert Nickols Watkin, “The Forming of the Southern Presbyterian Minister: From Calvin to the American Civil War” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1969), 374n30. For the correspondence between Thornwell and Breckinridge, see Palmer, Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, 251ff. Charles Hodge of Princeton and Thomas Smyth of Charleston, SC, were two primary opponents of the position of Thornwell and Breckinridge. Hodge’s arguments can be found, among other places, in “The Rights of Ruling Elders,” Princeton Review 15, No. 2 (April 1843), 313ff.; and What is Presbyterianism? (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1855). Smyth’s writing on the subject are found in Complete Works of Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D., Volume 4 (Columbia, SC: The R. L. Bryan Company, 1908).

                9. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1844), 352, 362, 364, 366, 370-371.

                10. Mayse, “Robert Jefferson Breckinridge and the ‘Elder Question’,” 83.

                11. Robert J. Breckinridge, The Christian Pastor, One of the Ascension Gifts of Christ (Baltimore, MD: D. Owen & Son, 1845), 4. Through this sermon, and the footnotes in the published edition, Breckinridge gives his commentary on the way the controversy played out. He was clearly upset at how the Princeton Seminary party in particular treated him, and had little patience for their arguments.

                12. Breckinridge, The Christian Pastor, 38n19. See also the protest written by Breckinridge in Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1843), 199.

                13. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: The Stated Clerk, 1843), 199-200. Emphasis his.

                14. Breckinridge, The Christian Pastor, 43-44.

John Williamson Nevin and the Problem of American Evangelicalism: A Brief Review of The Anxious Bench

Dr. Miles Smith is an Assistant Professor of Government, History & Criminal Justice at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He previously taught at Texas Christian University and Hillsdale College. His teaching generally focuses on the Nineteenth Century United States, but he also enjoys lecturing on Europe and Latin America.

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Very few ministers in the Presbyterian Church circa 2019 know the writings of John Williamson Nevin. Even fewer quote him on a given Sunday morning. But in the Nineteenth Century anyone in ministry in a Reformed church in North America not only knew who Nevin was, but most likely had a strong opinion on his writing. Nevin was a Presbyterian divine and intellectual who challenged the prevailing excesses among so-called Evangelicals and revivalists active during the early Republic. His 1846 work The Mystical Presence urged a return to Calvinist views on the Eucharist and challenged the Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper held by some prominent Presbyterians of the era, such as his one-time colleague Charles Hodge. Arguably his most important work, The Anxious Bench (1843), denounced the demagoguery, emotional coercion, and doctrinal deviation associated with revivalist movements that occurred during the so-called Second Great Awakening.[1]

Nevin studied at Union College in New York and received his divinity training at Princeton Seminary, then closely affiliated with the College of New Jersey (modern day Princeton University). From 1830 to 1840, Nevin taught at what is now Pittsburgh Seminary. During his time in Pittsburgh, Nevin read the works of August Neander and other Protestant scholars. Nevin worried about the increased Puritan and Wesleyan influence on Reformed churchmanship and sacramentalism. Nevin especially saw appeals to emotion in order to gain dubious immediate “conversions” as a direct assault of the work of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments more generally. Inherent in the so-called Evangelicalism of the day was a penchant for showmanship and celebrity that conflated enthusiasm and passion with entire working of the third Person of the Trinity. Holy scripture and its un-inspired but ecclesiastically authoritative auxiliaries, creeds, confessions, and catechisms, should form the core of Protestant churchmanship, not emotionally driven opinions or narratives that hinged on no other authority than that of the speaker’s enthusiasm. “Who shall assure us,” asked Nevin, that every conversion made at a revival meeting—wherein many of the supposed convertees never went again to church or exhibited marks of piety—was  “to be regarded with confidence, as the genuine fruit of religion? It is marvelous credulity, to take every excitement in the name of religion, for the work of God’s Spirit.” Emotionally driven faux-conversions places enormous demands the charity of devout Christians when they were “asked to accept in mass, as true and solid, the wholesale conversions that are made in this way.”[2]

During the ten years that followed Nevin’s move to Pittsburgh, he spent much of his intellectual and ministerial energy on reorienting Reformed churches towards their historic fraternity with Lutherans and other sacramental Protestants. Nevin joined the German Reformed Church in 1840 in order to take a position as a professor at Mercersburg Seminary, but he remained well within the world of Reformed theologians. Presbyterians and the continental Reformed churches, Nevin knew, shared more with Lutherans than they did with New England’s Puritan Congregationalists and Wesleyans. Their revivalist and doctrinal deviations from historic Protestant doctrines became more worrisome to Nevin as revival upon revival swept across western New York and Pennsylvania. In their wakes they left a trail of heterodoxy and new churches such Joseph Smith Jr.’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Swedenborgians (precursors to Oneness Pentecostals), Millerites, Shakers, and other groups. Religious cacophony and religious demagoguery, a sort of “Evangelical” Führerprinzip, emerged wherein churches were driven by popularity and raw human will power.

Nevin and other orthodox sacramental Protestants watched in horror as word and sacrament were replaced by enthusiasm and successive “new measures” utilized by revivalist ministers to gain converts. Inevitably the newness of the measures would wear off, and revivalists would try and replicate the success of the preceding measures with even newer and often more outrageous measures, many of which took the form of unhealthy emotional coercion. The listeners who attended the revivals grew, said Nevin, “obtuse to the stirring show,” and felt themselves in “no connection with what is going forward, except as they find an opportunity, from time to time, to fall in with the catch of some familiar revival-song, which they shout forth as boisterously as anybody else.” Nevin argued that “fanaticism has no power to make God’s presence felt. It is wild, presumptuous and profane, where it affects to partake most largely of the power of heaven.” “No wonder,” Nevin wrote exasperatedly, “that the religion which is commenced and carried forward under such auspices, should show itself to be characteristically coarse and gross.” [3]

The Anxious Bench’s warnings went largely unheeded and North American religiosity proved increasingly driven by what Europeans called schwarmerei, or unbridled enthusiasm. Nevin went on to serve as president and professor at what is today Franklin & Marshall College. He authored several other well-received works of theology and church history. He and Philip Schaff collaborated regularly and Nevin encouraged his colleague to complete his magnificent eight-volume History of the Christian Church. A small but welcome reclamation of Nevin by Reformed historians and theologians has occurred in the twenty-first century. Jonathan G. Bonomo’s 2015 Incarnation and Sacrament contextualizes and explains the debate over eucharistic theology between Hodge and Nevin. D.G. Hart’s John Williamson Nevin: High-Church Calvinist is an excellent biography and primer on the robust ecclesiology that typified Nevin and other Reformed clerics in the United States during the Nineteenth Century. Bonomo and Hart’s works, one hopes, will not be the last on this useful and fascinating figure in the history of North American Reformed churches.

[1] For more on the eucharistic controversy see Linden J. Debie, Coena Mystica: Debating Reformed Eucharistic Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013); George W. Richards, “The Mercersburg Theology: Its Purpose and Principles,” Church History 20 (1951): 42-55; Richard E. Wentz, John Williamson Nevin, American Theologian (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[2] John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench (Chambersburg: The German Reformed Church, 1844), 35-36.

[3] Nevin, The Anxious Bench, 109-110.