The Church and the Lord’s Supper
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Charles Hodge was Princeton Seminary’s leading antebellum theologian. He is known for biblically and historically defending Protestant and Reformed doctrines against the various opponents and critics of his day. Regarding the doctrine of the church and sacraments, Hodge was especially concerned with the assertions of Mercersburg theologians like Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin and Oxford Tractarians like John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey. These theologians promoted views of the church and sacraments that Hodge believed were destructive to traditionally Protestant views of the Christian gospel itself. This book contains articles on the church and the sacraments that Hodge published in The Princeton Review to confront the High Church views of the church and the sacraments that were found in Mercersburg theology and the Oxford Movement. Hodge didn’t address these particular issues in his published Systematic Theology, and many of these articles are here presented in full in book form for the first time.
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- Contains articles on the church and the sacraments that Hodge published.
- Includes articles that were used to confront the High Church views of the church.
- Presents many articles in book form for the first time.
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 A Summary of the Evangelical Doctrine of the Church
- Chapter 2 Theories of the Church: A Critique of High Church Ritualism
- Chapter 3 The Spiritual Nature of the Church
- Chapter 4 The Visibility of the Church
- Chapter 5 The Perpetuity of the Church
- Chapter 6 The Reformed Protestant Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper
- Scripture Index
I am thrilled to see these articles from Charles Hodge put together in book form and made accessible for a wider audience. With clear writing, careful scholarship, and lucid argumentation, Hodge addresses some of the most important issues of ecclesiology in his day—which happen to still be some of the most important issues in our day. I hope that this volume will be read by many students, pastors, elders, and thoughtful Christians in our churches.
Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church (Matthews, NC); Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte)
Charles Hodge’s concerns over the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church and the Mercersburg Theology in the German Reformed Church remain as pertinent today as they were then. This is why Gary Steward’s reprisal of these important controversies is so needed and timely. Will the significance of the church in its essentially invisible character prevail, or will some overly objective definition dominate? Some views circulating in Reformed circles today tend to undermine the Westminster Confession’s definition of the church as ‘the communion of saints,’ thus rendering the church into a merely external organization. These views will result in nominalism and the politicization of the church’s mission. We need to hear Hodge’s warnings about the true character of the church, lest we end up subverting the gospel and the spiritual mission of the church to gather and perfect the saints.
—Alan Strange, Professor of Church History, Mid-America Reformed Seminary