Catholicity, Orthodoxy, and Lordship
Mathison describes in very clear terms the uniqueness of Nevin in the 19th century ecclesiastical environment:
In the midst of a church that had been heavily influenced by the new measures of revivalism of Charles Finney, anti-clerical and primitivist restorationism, democratic individualism, Baconianism and Scottish common-sense realism stood this confessional Calvinist with high views of the church, the creeds, and the sacraments.
There is evidence that Nevin was driven to the deep study of history because he had inherited the department of church history at Western in 1837, but the study of history had also become a safe haven providing him solace at a time when the Presbyterian Church was falling apart.14 His obvious distaste for the rancor dividing Presbyterians into New and Old Schools frustrated him. Nevin was slightly right of center in the debate that ultimately split the Presbyterian Church. But he like Hodge sought reconciliation and when that seemed beyond sight he despaired.
{Mercersburg Project, Gen. Ed. Brad Littlejohn}
Mark Noll writes in the foreword:
The debate on the proper understanding of the Lord’s Supper that Nevin carried on with his former teacher, Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary, is one example of high-level theological reasoning on both sides. If, in my opinion, Nevin was the clear winner in that debate, Hodge did much better in some of his other engagements, as on Christianity as a way of life, on the meaning of baptism as an ecumenical Christian rite, or on the necessity of an Augustinian view of human nature.
Brad Littlejohn offers this concise definition:
…but if we may attempt to capture it in a nutshell, we might describe it thus: the Mercersburg Theology was a distinctively American yet cosmopolitan nineteenth-century theology— catholic, sacramental, both modern and ancient, Romantic and Reformed. Its eclecticism and historical awareness in an age of rigid orthodoxies, its ecumenism in an age of confessional quarrels, its theological seriousness and lofty speculation in an
American landscape dominated by anti-intellectualism, set it apart from the crowd of competing American theologies.{Series Introduction}