Between Mercersburg and Oxford: The Ecclesiology of John Williamson Nevin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract\nThis thesis explores the ecclesiology of the American theologian John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886) and its relationship to the wider “church question” of the nineteenth century. It will argue that Nevin’s “high church” theology defended the freedom of the church against both theological and political obstacles. Nevin maintained that the American church must establish an identity separate from modern “Puritanism,” as expressed through revivalism, rationalism and sectarianism. Crucially, Nevin was aided in this struggle by the insights of the Oxford Movement. It is a common misperception that the Oxford Movement never influenced American Protestantism. This thesis will contend that Nevin proves to be an exception to this rule and that his work can only be understood in relation to the theological insights of the Oxford Movement. In this respect Nevin was unique when compared with many nineteenth century American Protestants, and deserves wider recognition for his unique contribution to theology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".