Born of Water and the Spirit (Paperback or Softback)

Born of Water and the Spirit presents essays on the sacraments by the three major representatives of "Mercersburg Theology," John Nevin, Philip Schaff, and Emanuel Gerhart. It focuses on Mercersburg's doctrine of baptism and Christian nurture, attempts to correct putative deficiencies of the major Reformed trajectories (e.g., New England and Princeton), and vigorously critiques the anti-sacramental animus of revivalistic evangelicalism. Mercersburg understood baptism as initiating a person (adult or infant) into the sacramental life of the church. Baptism and Eucharist were objective, spiritually real actions that made (what Nevin called) the "mystical presence" of Jesus Christ present to Christians, bringing transformative power into their lives. The present critical edition carefully preserves the original texts, while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography to orient the modern reader and facilitate further scholarship. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series is an attempt to make available for the first time, in attractive, readable, and scholarly modern editions, the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multiyear project, it aims to make an important contribution to the scholarly community and to the broader reading public, who can at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European, Reformed and catholic theology.

Sam Hamstra Jr. is the Affiliate Professor of Church History and Worship at Northern Seminary. He is the editor of several studies, most recently The Reformed Pastor: Lectures on Pastoral Theology by John Williamson Nevin, and has authored several works on worship, including What's Love Got to Do With It? How the Heart of God Shapes Worship.



John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886), professor successively at Western Theological Seminary, the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, and Franklin and Marshall College. He was a leading nineteenth-century theologian and founding editor of Mercersburg Review.


Philip Schaff (1819-1893), American theologian and church historian, was born in Chur, Switzerland on the fist of January, 1819. He was educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart, and at the universities of Tuebingen, Halle, and Berlin, where he was successively influenced by Baur, Tholuck, and Neander. In 1843 he became Professor of Church History and Biblical Literature at the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His inaugural address on The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English version by J. W. Nevin, was a pioneer work in the field of symbolics.

David W. Layman earned his PhD in Religion from Temple University in 1994. Since then, he has been a lecturer in religious studies and philosophy at schools in south central Pennsylvania and has researched and written several articles on the Mercersburg movement.

W. Bradford Littlejohn is President of the Davenant Trust and the author of The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity (Pickwick, 2009), as well as two forthcoming books and several articles on Richard Hooker and the English Reformation.