The Mercersburg Christology and Reformed

Ressourcement
William B. Evans
Erskine College, USA

Abstract
This article examines distinctive features of the christology associated with
the
Mercersburg Theology of John W. Nevin—its Irenaean framework, affirmation of
the
‘‘fallen’’ and ‘‘generic’’ humanity of Christ, and its pneumatological emphasis. It
also examines certain interpretive questions having to do with the place of
christology within the larger Mercersburg system, whether the incarnation would
have occurred apart from sin, and the fundamental character of the Mercersburg
Theology. Finally, the implications of the Mercersburg christology for Reformed
ressourcement are explored.

Keywords
Mercersburg, christology, Reformed ressourcement, John W Nevin,
participation

The Mercersburg christology and Reformed ressourcement

We may well describe the Mercersburg Theology movement as ‘‘Christ intoxi-
cated.’’ For John W. Nevin, Philip Schaff, and their students, the Incarnation
was the central event of history, the ontological ground of all created reality,
and the epistemological key to all truth. In short, christology is a central
dogma for the orders of both creation and redemption, and christology touches on
nearly everything—especially soteriology and ecclesiology.1

1. John W. Nevin, ‘‘The Apostles’ Creed,’’ Mercersburg Review 1 (1849), 315: ‘‘The Incarnation is the
deepest and most comprehensive fact, in the economy of the world. Jesus Christ
authenticates himself, and all truth and reality besides; or rather all truth and reality are
such, only by the relation in which they stand to him, as their great centre and last ground.’’
On this aspect of the Mercersburg Theology, see Richard Muller, ‘‘Emanuel V. Gerhart on
the ‘Christ Idea’ as Fundamental Principle,’’ WTJ 48 (1986): 97–117.

Corresponding author:
William B. Evans, Department of Bible, Religion, and Philosophy, Erskine College, PO Box 338, Due West,
SC
29639 USA.
Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Furthermore, there is the close association of Christ’s person and work.

The Incarnation is no mere conditio sine qua non for Christ’s work; it is an essential
part of that work. Related to this, there is also the role of Christ’s person in the
appli- cation of salvation—these writers insist that salvation takes place through
partici- pation in the very person of Christ, and not merely on the basis of what
Christ has done in some external forensic or instrumental sense. Thus, to
utilize Roger Newell’s distinction between ‘‘appropriationist’’ and
‘‘participationist’’ soteriolo- gies,2 Mercersburg is robustly participationist.
Yet another distinctive of the Mercersburg christology is the extraordinary
attention paid to the incarnate humanity of Christ, and especially to the transform-
ation of Christ’s humanity by the Holy Spirit at the resurrection as essential both to
his objective work of salvation and to the subjective appropriation of salvation by
the Christian. In this article we will look at distinctive features of the Mercersburg
christology, some interpretive questions that arise, and the potential
of Mercersburg for Reformed ressourcement today.

Distinctive features of the Mercersburg christology

The focus of the Mercersburg Theology is more on what might be termed ‘‘applied
christology,’’ that is, christology in service to soteriology and ecclesiology. Thus we
find rather little discussion of christological technicalities for their own sake. With
this in mind, however, there are certain distinctive characteristics that require fur-
ther elaboration.

Christ as the Irenaean Second

Adam
Mercersburg followed Schleiermacher and the mediating theologians in
viewing Christ as the ‘‘Second Adam,’’ as the one in whom humanity is
restored and brought into union with God. Thus the human race is determined by
two relational realities—being ‘‘in Adam’’ and being ‘‘in Christ,’’ and the framework
of thinking here is fundamentally Irenaean.3
Three themes in the church father Irenaeus are particularly important for under-
standing Mercersburg. First, there is the parallel between the first Adam and
the Second, Jesus Christ. Christ lives the full course of human life in obedience to
God, an obedience that Adam failed to achieve. Second, there is the real
solidarity of human beings in these two figures. Humanity participates in
Adam by natural generation, and Christians participate in Christ through spiritual
and sacramental incorporation into the mystical body of Christ, the church. The
line of thinking
2. See Roger Newell, ‘‘Participation and Atonement,’’ Christ in Our Place: The Humanity of God in
Christ for the Reconciliation of the World, ed. Trevor A. Hart and Daniel P. Thimell (Exeter:
Paternoster, 1989), 92–101.
3. This Irenaean aspect is noted by Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at
Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961), 144–45. See especially Irenaeus, ‘‘Against
Heresies,’’ in Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981 [reprint]), I: 440–58.
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here is corporate rather than individualistic, and Nevin insists that the church is not
a ‘‘sand heap,’’ or simply the aggregate of its individual members. Third, there
is the elevation of humanity into union with God by the incarnation and work
of Christ, as humanity is sanctified in Christ. All this is abundantly evident in
Mercersburg, and at times Nevin references Irenaeus by name or alludes to
his theory of recapitulation.4
As James Hastings Nichols noted, this basically Irenaean perspective is accom-
panied by a view of the atonement as a mighty victory over sin, death, and
the devil.5 In this, of course, we see important similarities with the Eastern
Christian tradition.6 At the same time, the substitutionary dimension of Christ’s
work that is more characteristic of Latin Christianity is not ignored. Nor did
Nevin deny the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the Christian. Rather,
both are placed within a broader context of incorporation and participation—it
is only as the human being is united with Christ that his substitutionary work and
righteousness avail. Thus, to be in Adam is to participate in his condemnation, and
to be joined with Christ is to participate in his forensic righteousness.7

The ‘‘fallen humanity’’ of

Christ
But what sort of humanity did the Logos assume in the Incarnation and
elevate into union with God? The Mercersburg theologians persistently
described it as a
‘‘fallen humanity’’ that was sanctified and elevated.8 By no means denying the
sinlessness of Christ, they emphasized both the solidarity of Christ with those
he came to save and the way in which fallen human life is redeemed and
elevated in
Christ. Broken and weakened humanity was assumed by Christ, and that broken-
ness has been healed in Christ.

4. See, e.g., Nevin, ‘‘Noel on Baptism,’’ Mercersburg Review (May 1850): 248, where he wrote, ‘‘Christ
must be of the same length and breadth in all respects with humanity as a whole, in order to be at all
a real and true Mediator. He must be commensurate with the universal process of humanity from
infancy to old age, as well as with its mere numerical extent. . . . He sanctified infancy and child-
hood, says Irenaeus, by making them stages of his own life. This expresses a just and sound feeling.’’
5. Nichols, Romanticism, 145–46. See, e.g., Nevin, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the
Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1846), 166.
6. Mercersburg connections to Eastern theology are explored in W. Bradford Littlejohn, Mercersburg
Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009).
7. On this, see William B. Evans, Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed
Theology (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008), 170–71.
8. Nevin, Mystical Presence, 223: ‘‘In taking our nature upon him, he was made in all respects like as
we are, only without sin. (Heb. iv. 15. v. 2, 7). he appeared ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’
(Rom. viii.3); ‘made of a woman, made under the law’ (Gal. iv.4). The humanity which he
assumed was fallen, subject to infirmity, and liable to death. In the end, ‘he was crucified through
weakness’ (2
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Cor. xiii.4). Under all this low estate however, the power of a divine life was always actively present,
wrestling as it were with the law of death it was called to conquer, and sure of its proper victory at
last. This victory was displayed in the resurrection.’’
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In numerous places Nevin asserted this assumption of sinful humanity, but

without naming his influences. Doubtless he was aware of the popularization
of the notion by the controversial deposed Scottish minister Edward Irving
(1792–
1834), and Nevin’s failure to mention Irving is understandable. More recently, this
position has been affirmed in the twentieth century by Karl Barth, and especially by
Thomas F. Torrance, who regarded the denial of it as the ‘‘Latin heresy,’’ leading to
an extrinsic view of the relationship between Christ and the Christian, and to an
exaggerated preoccupation with the forensic at the expense of realistic solidarity.9
Torrance’s reasoning here is likely a good summary of Nevin’s concerns.

The generic humanity of

Christ
In explaining how this incarnate humanity of Christ serves as the medium of
the New Creation, Mercersburg utilized a crucial distinction between individual
and generic humanity, between what Nevin termed ‘‘the simple man and the
universal man.’’ Both the first Adam and the Second Adam serve as the generic
heads of their respective communities. The first Adam has to do with humanity
as originally created and fallen, the Second Adam with humanity as redeemed,
recreated, and elevated through the person and work of Christ.10
This generic identity is understood in terms of organic law, a life principle that
determines the identity and character of those in solidarity with the head.
The organic law binding Adam and his posterity together is natural, while
with the Second Adam a new and higher principle has been introduced into
human exist- ence. While supernatural, it nevertheless becomes integral with
human existence.11
This distinction between individual and generic humanity enabled Nevin and
the Mercersburg thinkers to affirm a real and organic union without effacing the
per- sonal distinction between Christ and the Christian.12

9. See Edward Irving, The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of Our Lord’s Human Nature (London:
Baldwin and Cradock, 1830); Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T.
F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), I/2: 151–59; Thomas F. Torrance,
Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, ed. Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008),
61–65; ‘‘Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy,’’ Scottish Journal of Theology 39:4 (1986): 461–82.
10. See John W. Nevin, ‘‘Catholic Unity,’’ The Mercersburg Theology, ed. James Hastings Nichols
(New York: Oxford, 1966), 40; Mystical Presence, 173.
11. Nevin, Mystical Presence, 172: ‘‘The power of Christ’s life lodged in the soul begins to work there
immediately as the principle of a new creation. In doing so, it works organically according to the
law which it includes in its own constitution. That is, it works as a human life; and as such becomes
a law of regeneration in the body as truly as in the soul.’’
12. Nevin, Mystical Presence, 173: ‘‘We distinguish between the simple man and the universal
man, here joined in the same person. The possibility of such a distinction is clear in the case of
Adam. His universality is not indeed of the same order with that of Christ, but still the case has full
force, for the point now in hand. Adam was at once an individual and a whole race. All his
posterity partake of his life, and grow forth from him as their root and still his individual person
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has not been lost on this account. Why then should the life of Christ in the Church, be supposed to
conflict
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The coherence of these notions of the corporate or generic significance of

the humanities of Adam and Christ depends on philosophical presuppositions
that may be broadly designated as Platonic in tendency. For Nevin and
Mercersburg, this impulse was mediated by and filtered through the organic
idealism of Schelling and the German mediating theologians. In a description of T. F.
Torrance’s chris- tology that applies equally well to that of Nevin, George Hunsinger
notes that the sanctified humanity of Christ has ‘‘the status of a ‘concrete
universal.’’’13

Christ and the

Spirit
The Mercersburg Theology is also notable for its emphasis on the relationship of
pneumatology and christology. In his discussions of the Christian’s union and
solidarity with Christ, Nevin insisted that the Holy Spirit is not a surrogate
for Christ himself, as if the Spirit represents an otherwise absent Christ.
Rather, the believer is united with the divine-human Christ in heaven by the power
of the Holy Spirit.14 And because Christians are united with Christ through his
incarnate humanity, this humanity must be made spiritually accessible. To this
end, Nevin and the Mercersburg theologians argued that Christ’s humanity has
been taken up into the realm of Spirit.15 This transformation of Christ’s
incarnate humanity reaches its climax with the resurrection and ascension of
Christ, which constitutes the ‘‘final triumph of the Spirit in the glorified humanity of
Christ.’’16
The Mercersburg theologians were far from holding that Christ’s humanity
is somehow dissolved by or into the Holy Spirit. Rather, the point is that the
New Creation as it has been inaugurated by the transformation of Christ’s humanity
is an eschatological form of existence pervaded by the power of the Holy Spirit. All
this implies that the work of the Holy Spirit assumes a decisively new
character with the resurrection and ascension of Christ. In other words, the
christology is decisive for pneumatology and vice versa.17
with the idea of his separate, distinct personality, under a true human form? Why must we dream
of a fusion of persons in the one case, more than in the other?’’
13. George Hunsinger, ‘‘The Dimension of Depth: Thomas F. Torrance on the Sacraments of Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper,’’ Scottish Journal of Theology 54:2 (2001): 162. The affinity of Nevin for
Plato and the Christian Platonist tradition is explored in William DiPuccio, ‘‘Nevin’s Idealistic
Philosophy,’’ Reformed Confessionalism in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Sam Hamstra, Jr. and
Arie J. Griffioen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1995): 43–67.
14. See Nevin, Mystical Presence, 57, 193–95, 225. See also Evans, Imputation and Impartation, 159.
15. Ibid.,176: ‘‘All is spiritual, glorious, heavenly. His whole humanity has been taken up into
the sphere of the Spirit, and appears transfigured into the same life. And why then should it not
extend itself, in the way of strict organic continuity, as a whole humanity also, by the active
presence of Christ’s Spirit, over into the persons of his people?’’
16. Ibid., 222.
17. Ibid. ‘‘John goes so far as to say there was no Holy Spirit . . . till Jesus was glorified (John vii.39).
This does not mean of course that he did not exist; but it limits the proper effusion of the Spirit, as
known under the New Testament, to the Christian dispensation as such. It teaches besides, that the
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person of Jesus, as the Word made flesh, forms the only channel or medium, by which it
was
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Interpretive questions
Three interpretive questions are particularly relevant for this article. The first has
to do with the place of the Incarnation within the broader system of thought. Is it
the case, as some contemporaries argued, that the Incarnation has displaced the
atone- ment as the central saving event? To be sure, Nevin did insist that the
Incarnation has a certain priority over the atonement, but his concern in these
contexts was to underscore the inseparable relationship between Christ’s person
and his work and that the benefits of Christ cannot be abstracted from his person.
As Nevin put it,
‘‘Not by the atonement then, as something made over to us separately from
Christ’s person, are we placed in the possession of salvation and life; but only by
the atonement as comprehended in his person itself, and received through faith in
this form.’’18 Thus, far from slighting the importance of the work of Christ,
Mercersburg emphasized that work by foregrounding its connection with
Christ’s person, and in so doing it was able to highlight the importance of the
resurrection and ascension in ways unavailable to contemporaries who
focused primarily on the atonement.
A second question has to do with whether the Incarnation would have occurred
apart from sin. Further complicating this is the fact that the Mercersburg theolo-
gians were the heirs of German organic idealism as it came to them through
the mediating theologians. According to this way of thinking, the Incarnation is
the telos of creation in which the idea of divine–human unity is finally realized.
Thus Nevin argued, ‘‘The nature of the Messianic idea has its necessity in the
constitu- tion of humanity,’’ and here the logic of an ontological necessity of the
Incarnation even apart from sin becomes more clear.19
Nevin’s 1851 reviews of two German works do not finally settle the issue
for us.20 In the first, Nevin recounted with enthusiasm the arguments of the
Lutheran Karl Liebner for the necessity of the Incarnation apart from sin. In
the second, Nevin ably, though with a bit less enthusiasm, summarized the case
made by Julius Muller for the hamartiological rationale. Muller’s case was
formidable, both in its marshaling of biblical evidence and his presentation of
what he took to be the implications of Liebner’s view—a confusion of the
moral and the metaphysical, a subversion of the freedom of God, and
tendencies toward pantheism and uni- versalism. Nevin was clearly taken
aback by this.21 That being said, the heart of

possible for this effusion to take place. The Holy Ghost accordingly, as the Spirit of Christ, is, in the
first place, active simply in the Saviour himself. In this view, however, he cannot be separated from
the person of Christ. He constitutes rather the form, in which the higher nature of Christ
reveals its force.’’
18. Nevin, Mystical Presence, 240.
19. Erb, Dr. Nevin’s Theology (Reading, PA: Beaver, 1913), 236.
20. John W. Nevin, ‘‘Liebner’s Christology,’’ Mercersburg Review 3 (1851): 55–73; ‘‘Cur Deus
Homo,’’ Mercersburg Review 3 (1851): 220–39.
21. Nevin’s indecision has fascinated historians. Nichols, Romanticism, 149–50, wonders, ‘‘Did he
hang on dead center, unready to decide? Was he already feeling the paralysis of will which
was
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Nevin’s positive argument for the Incarnation—that the Logos had been
united with fallen human nature, had sanctified it, and thus had raised humanity to
a new level of existence—was, in fact, compatible with either rationale for
the Incarnation.
This, in turn, raises a third question that cuts to the heart of our understanding
of Nevin as a theologian, and of the broader Mercersburg movement. Is Nevin to be
understood primarily as an idealist theologian in the tradition of the German
mediating theologians? Or is he better seen as a biblical theologian with deep
patristic and Reformation roots, who found the apparatus of German idealism
useful in providing an idiom for articulating certain concerns but who was
not slavishly devoted to that apparatus when there were reasons to diverge from it?
On balance, the latter interpretation seems better to fit the facts. A careful survey of
the biblical citations in the Mercersburg Theology materials provides obvious
testi- mony to just how scriptural they were, and Nevin’s failure to defend a clear
impli- cation of the idealist christology against Muller’s learned onslaught
at least suggests a measure of independence.22

The Mercersburg christology and Reformed ressourcement

The recognition that the Mercersburg Theology is best understood as
Protestant Christian theology based on Scripture and deeply informed by
patristic and Reformation insights (and often expressed in an idealist idiom)
is significant for this section, which ponders the relevance of Mercersburg for
Reformed and evan- gelical retrieval today. Here I suggest two areas in which there
is something to be learned from the Mercersburg Theology.

Engaging Reformed and evangelical

forgetfulness
On a number of levels we may sense a certain forgetfulness in some more
trad- itional Reformed and evangelical theology. First, there is forgetfulness of
the Incarnation. Such theology tends to be atonement-centered, finding more
signifi- cance in Good Friday than Easter, and spending more time on the work of
Christ than the person. Particularly evident is the eclipse of the humanity of
Christ as a theological factor in the application of salvation—it often serves as little
more than a necessary precondition of the atonement. Of course, in this sentiment
more recent Reformed and evangelical theology stands in real discontinuity
with both the

shortly to cripple his speculative interest? This whole aspect of the Mercersburg christology
ran into a question mark and remained unresolved.’’ D. G. Hart, John Williamson Nevin: High
Church Calvinist (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2005), 147, shares Nichols’s perplexity and attributes
Nevin’s indecision to his ‘‘plunging into the depths of despair.’’
22. Witness Nevin’s 1861 article ‘‘Jesus and the Resurrection,’’ a compelling presentation of the
Mercersburg christology and distinctive for its presentation in a more biblical than philosophical
idiom.
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Catholic tradition and much earlier Reformed thinking. Mercersburg reminds

us that there is a richness of theological content to be explored.
In addition, there has been a forgetfulness of solidarity, and we see this on both
the right and the left. On the right, the impulse has been ‘‘appropriationist,’’ in that
salvation is largely external; it is somehow ‘‘on the basis of what Christ has done’’
rather than ‘‘in Christ’’ in any real sense. On the left, Jesus has often become little
more than a metaphor for whatever immanentistic scheme is being proposed.
In other words, the Mercersburg complaints about soteriological ‘‘abstraction’’
would seem to be as timely today as they were in the mid-nineteenth century.
On these issues there is a twentieth-century successor to Mercersburg in
Thomas F. Torrance. Despite the fact that Torrance did not, so far as I can
tell, cite Mercersburg at all, there are remarkable material continuities on
issues of theo- logical method, christology, and soteriology, and, given the
prominence of Torrance today, this makes the question of retrieval that much
more interesting.23

Engaging the soteriological status

questionis
Today there seems to be an increasing sense that extrinsic, appropriationist soter-
iologies are abstract and fail to provide a firm basis both for the unity of the
experience of salvation in Christ and for a robust ecclesiology. Thus there has
been a striking groundswell of interest more recently in the notion of
‘‘participa- tion’’ in Christ evident in Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed circles,
as well as beyond. For example, in 2008 I argued, drawing on insights
from Calvin, Mercersburg, and Torrance, that both the forensic and the
transformatory elem- ents of salvation can be fruitfully articulated in terms of
‘‘participation’’ in Christ, and that from such thinking flows a renewed
ecclesiology which recognizes that
‘‘the pilgrimage of the individual Christian is ineluctably connected with the
pil- grimages of other Christians through union together with the life of
Christ.’’24
From a Lutheran perspective, the notion of participation in Christ has been fruit-
fully explored by the Finnish school of Luther interpretation and by Robert
Jensen.25 Calvin’s participationist theology of union with Christ has more recently
been insightfully examined at length by Todd Billings and Julie Canlis.26 Even
more recently, a Reformed theologian with a deep interest in the Roman
Catholic Nouvelle the´ologie, Hans Boersma, has called for a return to the participa-
tionist ‘‘Platonist–Christian synthesis’’ of the ‘‘great tradition’’ that is, at its
best,

23. On these continuities, see William B. Evans, ‘‘Twin Sons of Different Mothers: The Remarkable
Theological Convergence of John W. Nevin and Thomas F. Torrance,’’ Haddington House Journal
11 (2009): 155–73.
24. Evans, Imputation and Impartation, 266.
25. See, e.g., Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jensen, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish
Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
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26. See J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union
with Christ (New York: Oxford, 2008); Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent
and Ascension (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).
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both trinitarian and christocentric.27 Finally, in another recent volume Roger

Owens has explored a variety of participationist approaches to christology and
ecclesiology, and has argued that a participationist framework is vital for an eccle-
siology that does justice to the visibleness, physicality, and practices of
the church.28
We are not suggesting that all these writers are on the same page with respect to
the nature and implications of a participationist soteriology. There are differences
over the role of philosophical ontology, the role of the person of Christ, and
the nature of participation itself. This is not surprising, in that the broader
current interest in participation is coming from at least three quarters—from
Radical Orthodoxy with its more Neoplatonic, creationally focused program,
from those concerned to transcend the forensic–spiritual dualism of later federal
orthodoxy’s soteriology, and from those who are responding to a set of problems
regarding the importance and coherence of human action arising in part from
Reformed moner- gism and in part from Barth’s objectivism and actualism. Rather,
for a variety of reasons the discussion of participation has reached critical mass,
and the point here is that Mercersburg anticipated much of this discussion in
its nineteenth-century context and should legitimately be included in the
contemporary discussion. Furthermore, the Mercersburg focus on the role and
importance of the incarnate humanity of Christ is significant and potentially
fruitful.
We may further locate Mercersburg in the current context by comparing it with
two other current options—Radical Orthodoxy (RO) and Karl Barth. As Roger
Owens rightly notes, RO thinker John Milbank ‘‘has done more than anyone to
bring the theological topic of participation back onto the theological scene.’’29
Milbank and his RO colleagues have argued at length that in medieval nominalism
created reality was uncoupled from its transcendent foundation in God. Unable to
sustain value and significance on its own, reality was ‘‘flattened’’ and western cul-
ture slouched toward nihilism. Drawing on Neoplatonism, they propose a partici-
pationist ontology in which created reality is ‘‘suspended’’ from the divine, and the
Incarnation is understood as the preeminent manifestation of this
participatory ontology. But here a problem emerges—the Incarnation for RO
seems to be little more than an example or lesson in service to a creational
ontology rather than the classical Christian tradition’s decisive act of
redemption, reconciliation, and re-creation.30 In short, RO is participationist but
not especially christocentric.

27. See Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).
28. L. Roger Owens, The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices (Eugene, OR:
Cascade, 2012).
29. Owens, Shape of Participation, 133.
30. In fact, quite a variety of criticisms along this line have been voiced. See, e.g., James K. A. Smith,
‘‘Will the Real Plato Please Stand Up? Participation versus Incarnation,’’ in James K. A. Smith
and James H. Olthuis, eds., Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker,
2005), 61–72; Boersma, Heavenly Participation, 20; Owens, Shape of Participation, 137. One of my
colleagues, Steven Knepper, recently noted to me that in the debate between Slavoj Zizek and
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And not surprisingly, this combination of Platonizing participation focused on the

divine upholding of creation coupled with a lack of a really decisive
christology then issues in an undeveloped ecclesiology.31
Karl Barth developed the theme of solidarity with Christ in discussions of elec-
tion and vocation.32 These two contexts correspond to the two forms of Barthian
‘‘participation’’ in Christ helpfully explicated by Adam Neder.33 First, Jesus Christ is
the electing God as well as the representative elect and reprobate human
being who accomplishes salvation for all and absorbs the divine penalty for
sin. Thus
creation and humanity comprehensively considered must be understood in relation
to Jesus Christ, and there is a ‘‘de jure’’ or ‘‘objective’’ participation of all in
Christ.34 Key here is Barth’s ‘‘objectivism,’’ in which Christ not only fulfilled
the divine initiative toward sinful humanity, but also fulfills the human requirement
of response in faith and obedience.
Second, there is what Neder terms a ‘‘de facto’’ or ‘‘subjective’’ participation in
Christ, which Barth developed especially in the context of divine calling. Here
‘‘union with Christ’’ is framed in actualistic terms where the focus is on
event, decision, and personal confrontation and encounter, and in speaking of
this rela- tionship Barth clearly preferred the term ‘‘fellowship’’ to ‘‘union.’’35
In this rela- tionship of encounter Christ calls the Christian through the Holy
Spirit and the Christian responds with faith and obedience.36 In short, the
Christian’s ‘‘union with Christ’’ consists in this dynamic relationship of call and
response, in which the Christian is voluntarily united with Christ in will and action,
knows the self to be justified and sanctified in Christ, and awakens to his or her
genuine humanity.
Two points must be noted here. First, this relationship of encounter is not
‘‘participation’’ in the more traditional senses of the term (whether we are talking
about Platonic formulations or patristic and Reformational understandings of real
solidarity with the incarnate humanity of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit).37

John Milbank, it is the atheist Zizek who has more of substance to say about christology than does
Milbank. See their The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Cambridge, MA: MIT,
2009).
31. Owens, Shape of Participation, 144, speaks of Milbank’s ‘‘absent ecclesiology.’’
32. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1936–1969), II/2, 3–194; IV/3.2, 520–54.
33. Adam Neder, Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009).
34. See Ibid., 16–18.
35. See Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3.2, 539, 547.
36. See Ibid., 543–48.
37. Neder, Participation, 45, rightly notes, ‘‘Barth certainly uses the traditional language of
partici- pation in the divine being, but he infuses that language with new meaning—his actualistic
under- standing of divine–human communion. He offers an alternative account in which
human participation in God occurs not on the level of a cleansing or transformation of human
nature .
. . but rather as an event of covenant fellowship in which human beings do not become gods, but
rather the human beings they were created to be.’’
407
Evan Theology Today 407
s 71(4)

Second, in contrast to these more traditional understandings of participation,

Barth’s formulations were relentlessly extrinsic, and this studied extrinsicism
is famously reflected in Barth’s basically Zwinglian and Baptistic view of the
sacra- ments.38 Thus, in Barth we encounter a deep and profound christocentrism
that is not, at least in the traditional sense of the term, participationist, and this
combin- ation issues in a comparatively low ecclesiology. For Barth, while the
church is a vital witness to the world, it is not the decisive sphere of salvation.39
In contrast to RO and Barth, Mercersburg offers a vision of theology that is
both christocentric and robustly participationist without slighting either. Not sur-
prisingly, it is also vigorously sacramental and ecclesial. The church is indeed
the body of Christ and sphere of salvation. All this would seem to suggest
that, for those less than satisfied with the soteriological abstractions and
ecclesially chal- lenged character of much contemporary evangelical and
Reformed thinking, the Mercersburg christology and its attendant soteriology and
ecclesiology are worth a second look.

Author biography
William B. Evans is the Eunice Witherspoon Bell Younts and Willie Camp Younts
Professor of Bible and Religion at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina. He
holds degrees from Taylor University (BA), Westminster Theological Seminary in
Philadelphia (MAR, ThM), and Vanderbilt University (MA, PhD). In addition to many
articles and book reviews, he is the author of Imputation and Impartation: Union
with Christ in American Reformed Theology (2008) and What Is the
Incarnation? (2013). He is an ordained minister in the Associate
Reformed Presbyterian Church.

38. On this extrinsic character of Barth’s spirituality, see Neder, Participation, 11–12, 37; Evans,
Imputation and Impartation, 243–45. George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the
Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 253–78, has implicitly sought to vindi-
cate Barth from the charge of extrinsicism.
39. See Nicholas M. Healy, ‘‘The Logic of Karl Barth’s Ecclesiology,’’ Modern Theology 10/3 (1994):
265.