One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 1. John Williamson Nevin
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comprehensive without becoming cumbersome. In addition to offering citations for works referenced in the original, these additions fall under four further headings:
1. Translation
2. Unfamiliar terms and historical figures
3. Additional source material
4. Commentary
We have attempted to be comprehensive in providing translations of any untranslated foreign-language quotations in these works, and have wherever possible made use of existing translations in standard modern editions, to which the reader is referred.
Additional annotations serve to elucidate any unfamiliar words, concepts, or (especially) historical figures to which the authors refer, and where applicable, to provide references to sources where the reader may pursue further information (for these additional sources, only abbreviated citations are provided in the footnotes; for full bibliographical information, see the bibliography).
Accordingly, we have sought to shed light on the issues under discussion. Although most commentary on the texts has been reserved for the General Introduction and the Editor’s Introductions to each article, further brief commentary on specific points of importance has occasionally been provided in footnotes to facilitate understanding of the significance of the arguments.
We hope that our practice throughout will help bring these remarkable texts to life again for a new century, while also allowing the authors to be heard in their own authentic voices.
Acknowledgments
Volume Editor
As volume editor, I thank Bradford Littlejohn, the founding editor of this series, for the opportunity to edit this volume and, thereby, make a small contribution to the Mercersburg Theology Study Series. I thank David W Layman for his excellent editorial assistance in bringing this volume to completion. I thank Charles Hambrick-Stowe for his contribution to this volume. I also take this opportunity to thank Charles for his positive contribution to my life. While serving as Academic Dean of Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL, Charles hired me to join his teaching team. I thank Patrick Carey of Marquette University. When I informed Patrick that I wanted to focus my doctoral studies on American Protestant ecclesiology, he introduced me to John Nevin; he then wisely directed my dissertation—“John Williamson Nevin: The Christian Ministry” (1990). I thank Linden DeBie, editor of the first two volumes in The Mercersburg Theology Study Series, for paving the way for the editors who follow in his impressive wake. I frequently referred to Linden’s first two volumes for editorial guidance and quickly gave up on trying to keep up with the depth and breadth of his editorial comments. I thank Wipf & Stock for its commitment to Mercersburg Theology; this volume marks our third project together on that subject. I thank the Mercersburg Society for its support; I have been a member nearly since its inception and have benefited immensely from The New Mercersburg Review and the society’s annual conferences. Finally, I thank by wife Debbie for her support throughout the project.
General Editor
David Layman thanks Brad Littlejohn for the energy and passion that initiated this project, and for his continued counsel and assistance. He is grateful that Lee Barrett has been available to share the task of continuing this invaluable work as fellow general editor. The first text—The Anxious Bench—initiated the general editor into the Mercersburg tradition, and he is particularly happy for the opportunity to assist the volume editor in pulling it and the other texts out of dusty tomes and obscure reprints into a contemporary scholarly edition. Sam Hamstra Jr. took on an enormous task; the general editor primarily limited his contributions to providing cross-references to the growing body of texts and commentary within the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, along with tracking down especially obscure references—a task that would have been impossible without the assistance of Google Books, a searchable digital repository of texts written before the twentieth century. This volume now fills out the first six volumes in the projected series, which is identified throughout by the abbreviation “MTSS”.
The general editor also thanks the A. R. Wentz Library of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for making available Lutheran Observer, a periodical essential to the interpretation of The Anxious Bench. He also made regular use of the Philip Schaff Library of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Theological Seminary and the Archives of the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society. Finally, he thanks his daughter, Karen Louise Layman, for assistance in the final copy editing.
General Introduction
by Sam Hamstra Jr.
As a young pastor back in the 1980s, I began my doctoral studies with the hope of discovering an American Protestant ecclesiology to guide my service to the church. I quickly discovered that, while little work had been done in this area, most of what had been done could be found in the mid-nineteenth century. That time period is a gold mine for contemporary scholars interested in American Protestant ecclesiology. It was then that, with unprecedented intensity and devotion, Protestant Christians throughout the Old and New Worlds wrestled long and hard with the doctrine of the church and her ministry. From Oxford to Mercersburg and many places in between, theologians and practitioners turned their attention to the subject of ecclesiology. Their published works remain unsurpassed to this day.1
While nineteenth-century Americans addressed many issues concerning the church and the pastoral ministry, a great deal of their work was written in response to what Nevin refers to as the “great question of the age,”2 that being the Church Question.3 Of this question, Nevin writes,
It is evidently drawing to itself all minds of the more earnest order, more and more, in all parts of the world. Where it comes to be apprehended in its true character, it can hardly fail to be of absorbing interest; nor is it possible perhaps for one who has become thus interested in it to dismiss it again from his thoughts. Its connections are found to reach in the end, through the entire range of the Christian life. Its issues are of the most momentous nature, and solemn as eternity itself. No question can be less of merely curious or speculative interest. It is in some respects just now of all practical questions decidedly the most practical. In these circumstances it calls for attention, earnest, and prayerful, and profound.4
Philip Schaff agreed. In his Principle of Protestantism he writes, “1. Every period of the Church and of Theology has its particular problem to solve. . . . 2. The main question of our time is concerning the nature of the Church itself in its relation to the world and to single Christians.”5
The German Reformed Church
The German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania, later called the Reformed Church in the United States, may have wrestled with the Church Question more extensively than any other denomination.6 German Reformed immigrants scattered throughout the colonies during the eighteenth century, with thousands settling in Pennsylvania. Once settled, they gathered for “religious meetings” and then sought to establish congregations that conformed to the patterns they had left behind in Europe. Having no pastors at first, they invited lay leaders to “maintain the ministry of the Word.”7
The first lay leader on record was the schoolteacher John Philip Boehm (1683–1749). In 1720 Boehm settled on a tract of land in Whitpain Township, then in Philadelphia, now in Montgomery County. In a short time his German Reformed neighbors recognized his gifts and begged Boehm to take upon himself the office of the ministry, placing him “in a strait betwixt three considerations: the pleading of the people, the law of the Reformed Church, and the promptings of his conscience.”8 In time, his conscience prevailed and he accepted the