One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 2. John Williamson Nevin
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_8ab49cd9-8ab4-5291-a7b0-cbea57098057">39. [Nevin here begins a critique of “election” as an absolute decree selecting a specific, limited number of individuals for salvation. See “Hodge on Ephesians” below for his detailed critique of scholastic predestinarianism.]
40. [Matt 13:38.]
41. [Manicheanism held that that human soul had been contaminated and darkened by matter, and must be freed through an esoteric knowledge of divine illumination.]
42. [Lit., “foolish fire,” e.g., flitting phosphorescent lights, and thus something that misleads; an illusion.]
43. [Nevin would become less confident of the place of science in the redemption of humanity over the next decade. See “Jesus and the Resurrection,” 151, and “Nature and Grace,” 504–5.]
44. [See DeBie, Speculative Theology, 72 for the problem of the state raised by Hegelianism; for Nevin’s position see Borneman, Church, Sacrament, and American Democracy, 121–24. Borneman quotes the important text in Nevin, “Early Christianity” in Catholic and Reformed, 299.]
45. [Literally “from outside”.]
46. [Rom 11:5.]
47. [The argument of this paragraph is that catholicity transcends all apparent divisions in humanity: so far he has mentioned geographical separation, an “unconditional decree” that separates the elect from the non-elect, and a dichotomy between religion and culture or politics. In this obscure sentence, the hypothetical division appears to be between infancy and adulthood. Nevin’s point would in that case be that infants are just as much in the “reach” of Christianity as adults. One can find a fuller argument for this claim in “Noel on Baptism,” 98–101.]
48. [This three–fold power of the church is a commonplace in Reformed dogmatics: see T. E. Peck, Notes on Ecclesiology, 120 citing Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, Locus 18, Q. 29, ¶ 5 (vol. 3 [Geneva: Samuelem de Tournes, 1686], 308). The three powers are interpreting scripture, creating “rules of order,” and church discipline: Forbes, “Christ the Head of the Church,” in Lectures on the Headship of Christ, 24–5.]
49. [Possibly an allusion to Lam 2:15–16; see also Ps 50:2.]
50. [On May 8, 1828, William Ladd (1778–1841) brought together existing peace groups into The American Peace Society. Its stated purpose was to “promote permanent international peace through justice; and to advance in every proper way the general use of conciliation, arbitration, judicial methods, and other peaceful means of avoiding and adjusting differences among nations, to the end that right shall rule might in a law-governed world (“American Peace Society Records,” http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG001–025/DG003APS.htm).”]
51. [For later denunciations of “natural philanthrophism” and “merely humanitarian praxis,” see “The Internal Sense of Holy Scripture,” 9, 37–8 and “Once for All,” 124.]
document 2
Editor’s Introduction
The issues of pastoral function, pastoral authority, and private judgment have been debated since the Protestant Reformation. The debate became especially intense in American during the years following the American Revolution. At stake was the necessity of the pastoral office. The egalitarian principles of republicanism and the success of itinerant preachers encouraged the populace to reject the age-old distinction that set clergy apart as a separate order. Most rejected the notion that the office of the pastoral ministry was a necessary medium in the order of salvation. They denied that the properly installed pastor possessed unique authority as an officeholder to study, interpret, and proclaim the truths of the Bible. They believed, instead, that this authority was common to all Christians; each had the right of private judgment, a right which minimized the need for pastors.
Nevin, in prophetic fashion, called the denomination back to its theological roots, especially those of the Reformation and Patristic periods.52 He proposed a pastoral office that is an indispensable extension of the life-bearing quality of the church and a necessary link in the process of salvation. He also asserted that the properly installed pastor dispenses objective and spiritual realities that cannot be obtained anywhere else. In other words, in Nevin’s theory, salvation is impossible outside of the pastoral office in the church, the divinely ordained medium of saving grace. Furthermore, the pastoral office is clothed with apostolic authority to administer the means of grace, interpret and proclaim the scriptures, and discipline the wayward.
Nevin’s articulated his doctrine of the pastoral ministry in six documents. The first document is “Personal Holiness,” a lecture delivered in June of 1837, at the opening of the summer term at the Western Theological Seminary.53 The second document is an “Inaugural Address,” offered May 20, 1840, during his installation as Professor of Theology at Mercersburg Seminary. It affirms the “grandeur and solemnity of the work in which the Church has embarked” through the support of a theological seminary.54 Nevin returned to the theme of personal fitness for the ministry in a sermon delivered on July 10, 1842, entitled “The Ambassador of God: or the True Spirit of the Christian Ministry as Represented in Jesus Christ”.55 The fourth document is the present sermon. This systematic portrait of the pastoral office was delivered toward the end of November 1854 in Zion’s Church of Chambersburg during the installation of Bernard C. Wolff (1794–1870), Nevin’s successor as Professor of Theology. The fifth work is a liturgical form. As a member of the committee of the German Reformed Church that produced the “Provisional Liturgy” of 1857, Nevin developed the services for ordination and installation of ministers. The ordination service was approved with minimal changes for inclusion in the Order of Worship of 1866, an official publication of the German Reformed Church.56 Finally, we now have the recently resurrected lectures on pastoral theology, transcribed and published by the present editor.57
While from different periods in his career—and thus developing contrasting emphases—these six sources advance a consistent view-point. The earlier writings emphasize the personal qualities of the pastor as the “Ambassador of God,” reflecting the influence of Pietism. In “Personal Holiness,” for example, Nevin offers this exhortation to his students:
Resolve, then, now, in the strength of God’s grace, to save your own souls from the shipwreck of the second death. It should terrify you certainly to think of being damned, with the title of Reverend upon your head. It were better to descend to hell from any other height, than that you should go down thither from the sacred desk. Let your resolution be taken, then, now, within the walls of this Seminary, to make your calling and election