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 sure. Consider it part of your necessary preparation for that perilous office to which you are looking, to have your souls so strengthened in the principles of piety, that when you shall hereafter be thrown forth upon the world, there may be no danger of your falling away from your own steadfastness.58
The later writings deal with pastoral office and function, particularly the importance of properly installed pastors providing Christian nurture through the sacraments and catechism. The following text, “The Christian Ministry,” may be his most significant statement on the subject. In this three-point sermon on Ephesians 4:8–16, Nevin proposed that the pastoral office is of divine origin, is of supernatural force, and functions as a conduit of the life-transforming power of God.
This text marks an important development in Nevin’s understanding of the church and the pastoral office. He links the pastoral ministry to the church in such a way that they cannot be separated. He asserts that since the so-called “Great Commission” of Matthew 28 to the apostles precedes the church and the pastoral ministry originates with the apostles, we may conclude that the pastoral ministry precedes, even constitutes the church. Hence, while the church is a wider concept than the pastoral ministry, they are inseparable; where you find one, you will find the other. In “The Christian Ministry,” then, Nevin takes a “decisive step providing visible definition for the church catholic” through the mandatory presence of the pastoral ministry; he furthermore took a “decisive step away from the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers” by rooting the pastoral ministry, not in the communion of saints, but in the apostles.59 This development, as James Nichols suggests, may reflect the influence on the Mercersburg theologians of the German Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander (1498–1552). Nichols tracks the thought of Osiander to “that whole group of high-church theologians noted in Schaff’s background,” including Johann Löhe (1808–72),60 and then quotes Emanuel Hirsch:
The really characteristic doctrinal mark of this group of theologians emerges as the Osiander-Löhe teaching on the ministerial office. The powers of the clergy are not those common to all Christians and assigned to the ministry for exercise, but those peculiar to Christ, conferred by him on the Apostolate and transmitted in the church through ordination up to the contemporary holders of the office. The dichotomy of church and ministry is thus fundamental, and the ministry possesses the power basic to all church government.61
52. For more see Hamstra, “Nevin on the Pastoral Office.”
53. Nevin, Personal Holiness. This lecture was published at the request of the Western Seminary student body. It is identical to “Lecture Three” in his Mercersburg Seminary course on pastoral theology, as published in Hamstra, ed., The Reformed Pastor: Lectures on Pastoral Theology by John Williamson Nevin, 15–35.
54. Nevin, “Inaugural Address of Professor Nevin,” in Addresses Delivered at the Inauguration of Rev. J. W. Nevin, D.D. . . . , 27.
55. Nevin, The Ambassador of God.
56. Maxwell, Worship and Reformed Theology, 237, 295–96. Maxwell only considers the liturgy for the ordination of ministers, which he presents on pp. 457–66, with an analysis of its sources. Nichols gives excerpts from the 1866 edition of this liturgy in Nichols, ed., Mercersburg Theology, 346–48.
57. Hamstra, ed., The Reformed Pastor.
58. Ibid., 32.
59. Littlejohn, “Sectarianism and the Search for Visible Catholicity,” 411. The paragraphs that are the primary basis of Littlejohn’s critique are below, 42, 46.
60. Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, 259. Nichols remains the best study on the topic. See further Nichols, ed., Mercersburg Theology, 345–46; Maxwell, Worship and Reformed Theology, 36–39, and 237–43 on whether ordination was a sacrament for Nevin.
61. Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der Neuern Evangelischen Theologie, V: 194, trans. and quoted in Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, 259.
The Christian Ministry62
[Introduction]
Ephesians 4:8–16 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
We propose to consider from this passage, without farther introduction, the Origin, Nature, and Design of the Christian Ministry.
[The Origin of the Christian Ministry]
