Inoculation against Rome for Protestants

Apparently, some people are worried about the tractarians/ Puseyites/ Oxford movement even though that Anglican phenomenon is long gone. At least, in the case of this nineteenth-century movement, we have a real heterodox error to deal with, unlike the halucinatory rabidness against Reformed pastors who are persecuted under the label of the so-called “Federal Vision.” Unlike the “FV,” the participants in the Anglican movement of the nineteenth century actually rejected the Reformation, ultimately, and threw away justification by faith alone. I suspect some self-made defenders of orthodoxy wish it were still around to fight. But, as I said, it is long gone.

However, there are occasionally Roman Catholic apologists who get some attention, some of whom are apostates from Evangelicalism. Sometimes Reformed pastors have to deal with parishioners who get drawn to that communion. And the tractarians/ Puseyites/ Oxford movers are relevant to this phenomenon to this extent: There was a group of Reformed pastors and scholars who responded to them and upheld the Protestant faith in resistance to the claims of Rome.

One enduring work we have from these Reformed scholars is Philip Schaff’s The Principle of Protestantism. It contains a vigorous defense of justification by faith alone [here is a snip] and a thorough response to the tract/Pusey/Oxforders. But, more importantly, it addressed the weaknesses of an anemic Protestantism which the t/P/O were exploiting. Schaff’s book isn’t perfect, of course, but it is, in my experience, a red pill out of the matrix of arguments for Roman Catholic claims. The idea of becoming Roman Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox, though Schaff doesn’t give them real attention in the book) is simply unthinkable to anyone who reads Schaff without a predetermined commitment not to accept his reasoning.

For those who would like a secondary source into the period, D. G. Hart’s study of Schaff’s friend in John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist is simply the best book available and well worth reading.

2 thoughts on “Inoculation against Rome for Protestants

  1. Garrett

    Yep, Schaff and Nevin inoculated me against my Anglo-Cat curiosities and threw me back against the backboard of a robust, liturgical, sacramental and fully Reformed paradigm.

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  2. Jonathan Bonomo

    Rev. Horne,

    Good thoughts. I agree with you about POP. It is (along with Nevin’s MP) a classic of American theological scholarship. And it utterly obliterates the pretensions of Newman’s historical polemic (and preceded it chronologically as well, which is important to note) which is so often flaunted about as conclusively settling matters by many a RC pop-apologist.

    But I would diverge from your assessment of Hart’s work, though. I really appreciate his bio. on Nevin. It is after all what spurred me toward a greater interest in the Mercersburg men myself. But I find Nichols’ “Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg,” to be far superior and more well-rounded than Hart’s work on a number of levels. Having read both works more than once amidst a continued effort to understand and enter the thought-world of Nevin and Schaff on their own terms, I think the work of Nichols has yet to even be approached, let alone surpassed. His remains the standard secondary work on the topic, in my opinion.

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