Ark and Church

DG Hart gives this summary of Nevin’s views on the church as ark: “In Nevin’s scheme Christian salvation played out really and concretely in history, in the form of the church, and ways not simply an abstract covenant transacted in the Godhead before all time. With Christ and his presence in the church, a ‘new order of life’ had entered human history. As such, those who were baptized into the church stood ‘in correspondence with the powers of a higher world, the mysterious forces of the new creation in Christ Jesus.’ Nevin used the image of Noah’s ark to explain the way in which he was conceiving of the church. Those outside the patriarch’s family had a chance to be saved from destruction by joining Noah and his family, but their unbelief and disobedience condemned them. Those who entered the ark, however, had availed themselves of the means of salvation from the flood. Their fate was not certain since they could through unbelief and disobedience also frustrate divine mercy. But while on the ark, they enjoyed an estate of ‘glorious miraculous privilege, as compared with the condition of the world at large.’ ‘It placed them in a new order of existence, and brought them into living actual communication with the scheme of grace which God had been pleased to provide for the deliverance of His people.’ In effect, the church of Christ fundtioned exactly as the ark. It is ‘the necessary medium of salvation to men.’”