Christocentric Reformed Theology in Nineteenth-Century America

Key Writings of Emanuel V. Gerhart

Emanuel V. Gerhart, Annette G. Aubert, Lee C. Barrett, David W. Layman, Annette G. Aubert, Lee C. Barrett, David W. Layman

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725250864, 9781725250871
• eBook ISBN: 9781725250888
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Knowledge of the ideas of the theologian Emanuel V. Gerhart is essential for understanding nineteenth-century American theology. Gerhart was one of the first to introduce a complete systematic Christocentric theological system to Americans. His Institutes of the Christian Religion developed the ideas of European theologians and promoted the effort to systematize Mercersburg theology. Gerhart embraced German idealism rather than Scottish philosophy in his scholarship. As a mediating theologian, he attempted to reconcile historical Christianity with modern culture. His lectures, essays, and texts addressed the religious challenges and intellectual issues of his day from a Christocentric perspective. Together they were a major contribution to the Mercersburg Movement in particular and American theology in general from the antebellum period to the progressive era. His publications were devoted to a range of disciplines that included education, philosophy, and theology. This volume portrays Gerhart's core theological ideas as found in his main texts and offers introductory commentaries and gives the historical background for his intellectual contributions.

Part 1

Historical and Methodological Prolegomena

Document 1

“Inaugural Address: The Vital Principle of College Education”

Editor’s Introduction

Faith and College Education

After John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff in turn declined offers for the position of President of Franklin and Marshall College, in 1854 the school’s Board of Trustees selected Emanuel Gerhart as its leader. At the time, Gerhart was still serving as Professor of Theology at a seminary in Tiffin, Ohio, and though he expressed reservations, he agreed to return to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Some historians have speculated on the potential advantages of his decision given his Midwestern location during the Mercersburg conflict in the East.134 Regardless, the trustees’ selection was likely based on Gerhart’s reputation for talents and abilities “beyond most of his contemporaries.”135 In accepting his appointment as president, Gerhart remarked: “Whatever I am, intellectually, morally, or spiritually, I owe, next to my parents, to this College.”136 As its first president (1855–1866), he is remembered for his many personal sacrifices in support of the school, especially during the Civil War and in terms of fundraising for the college’s first buildings.

Gerhart’s inauguration took place on July 24, 1855. The day’s events included an introductory talk by Rev. Samuel Bowman about the value of a rigorous and religious education. This was followed Gerhart’s address on “The Vital Principle of Education,” in which he presented his educational agenda. In the nineteenth century, the function of inaugural addresses was for newly hired administrators or professors to express their visions and guiding principles, and Gerhart took full advantage of his opportunity.137 The primary purpose of this address was to convey his vision for an educational approach that emphasized faith without completely rejecting a human-centered education. Even though Gerhart adopted certain German philosophical ideas for his views regarding education, his overall approach to the topic sharply contrasted with the existing German university model, which Wilhelm von Humboldt described as “live for science.”138 By contrast, Gerhart believed in faith as a fundamental facet of education.139

Gerhart’s statement reveals how his views on college-level education were informed by his Mercersburg theological training. While two of the essential college education principles he described (worldly affairs and the second human consciousness) could be viewed as standing outside of religion, he identified “a positive faith in Jesus Christ” as the most vital principle. As a mediating theologian, Gerhart believed that the foundations of intellectual development must be constructed on the person of Christ, who in his view represented the basis of all realities and the vitality of “literature, philosophy and religion.”140 In stressing this principle as essential for education, Gerhart clearly rejected a dualist worldview, and by making these a priori claims, he introduced his American audience to a discourse traceable to idealism.

Gerhart rejected common sense philosophy as a starting point for education—perhaps a reaction to what he observed in nineteenth-century American culture. Thanks to his teacher Frederick Rauch, he was familiar with the European education system and therefore aware of alternative forms to the US model. Over the course of his life, he injected some features of German idealism into his vision for education, and expressed agreement with the idea that all sources of knowledge must be derived from a single principle.141 While not mentioning any specific source, Gerhart apparently shared the German idealist philosopher’s Friedrich Schelling’s (1775–1854) belief that “only one principle govern[s] all reality.”142 A key concern for Gerhart was applying a single guiding principle to education, and he accepted a Christocentric theology as the most suitable. During a period in which rejection of faith became a dominant presupposition in nineteenth-century German academic circles, Gerhart made every effort to maintain an interior association between the person of Jesus Christ and all scientific disciplines. While he acknowledged value in other academic systems, he argued that they were only truly profitable if guided by a Christocentric principle.

It is easy to see how Gerhart’s preoccupation with Christian education influenced his attempts to reconcile science and religion. In this respect, he agreed with German and Princeton Seminary peers who reluctantly considered the relationship between science and religion in terms of conflict. In his inaugural address, we see how Gerhart tried to promote both science and religion. By advocating a bridge between the two, he could still defend an a priori Christocentric scheme143 by arguing that in Christ, “every branch of Science complete[s] itself.”144

134. Good, History of the Reformed Church, 297.

135. Dubbs, History of Franklin College, 270.

136. “Gerhart, Emanuel Vogel (1817–1904): Biographical Information.”

137. Kovalyova, “Presidential Inaugural Addresses,” 41.

138. Howard, Protestant Theology, 131.

139. Aubert, “An American Mediating Champion,” 22.

140. Gerhart, Addresses Delivered at the Inauguration, 11.

141. Gerhart, Addresses, 20. Schelling, Grounding, 128.

142. Schelling, Bruno, or, On the Natural, 6.

143. Lee, Karl Barth und Isaak August Dorner, 20.

144. Gerhart, Addresses, 20.

Inaugural Address

The Vital Principle of College Education145

It has been said, the highest study of man, is man himself. To some minds the proposition may come with the force of a self-evident truth. But the question arises, Is man the highest being? Is reason the source of truth? Is logical reasoning the principle of sound philosophy? Does human will determine, or even modify any department of natural or moral science? To every question an answer must be given in the negative. The proposition must give way to another that is at once both philosophical and Christian. It is this. The highest study of man, is God; God in nature, God in man, God in history, and, above all, God in Christ. Here is the fundamental truth. All beings possess only a relative existence. God is absolute. All conceptions and ideas are limited in their nature and relations. The idea of God and its postulates are all-embracing and eternal. To the apprehension of these man struggles to rise, turning away instinctively from all others as inadequate to the satisfaction of the first and strongest aspirations of his being. To look at any department of nature, therefore, or at man himself, as involving subjects of reflection that can fix or satisfy the innate longings of reason, implies the controlling influence of a radical falsehood.

In acknowledgment of this general view have the majority of Colleges and Universities in Europe and America been established. To what extent they have always been true to their obligations, it is not now our place to enquire. I pass on to add, that the same idea has originated and given a distinctive character to the College, of which the Board of Trustees has now formally constituted me the President. Hence, though I could not but with diffidence pass through the significant ceremonies of this day, I nevertheless experience a sensible pleasure in assuming a trust that I feel to be in accordance with the most solemn vows that, as a minister of the Gospel, bind my conscience.

Franklin College was created by the Legislature as far back as the year 1787, with special reference to the interest of education and learning among the German population of the State. To secure this object, the charter provided that the Board of Trustees should be composed always of three equal interests or divisions, one representing the Lutheran Church, another the German Reformed Church, and a third, the community at large, on the outside of these two long established German confessions. Owing to circumstances which the Board had no power to control, the original purpose of the institution could never be carried into full effect. It remained at most a grammar school or academy rather than an actual college; and in this character its advantages, in the nature of the case, became local altogether, instead of general. It belonged to Lancaster more than to the German interest of Pennsylvania. In the meantime, however, its funds were increasing in value, and forming a solid foundation for some more comprehensive and efficient scheme of instruction, such as its charter was felt all along to contemplate and require. It was evidently necessary at the same time, if any such enterprize was to succeed, that it should go forward in some way under the auspices of one or the other, if not both, of the German confessions, which divided between them already two-thirds of the corporate rights and powers of the institution.146

It is not necessary to enter further upon the particulars of its history. These facts are cited to exhibit two points as true beyond dispute. Franklin College originated in a desire to promote thorough Christian education among the Germans of Pennsylvania. To secure these objects without fail, the charter placed the management of the Institution in the hands of men, who were pledged by their religious vows to respect, in the administration of its affairs, the revealed truths of Christianity as well as the demands of science.

Marshall College had a similar origin. As early as the year 1816, the Synod of the German Reformed Church, deeply impressed with the increasing want of educated ministers, took some initiatory ste...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Editorial Approach and Acknowledgments
• General Introduction
• Part 1: Historical and Methodological Prolegomena
• Part 2: Dogmatic Essays
• Part 3: Institutes of the Christian Religion
• Bibliography