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Philip Schaff: A Centennial Appraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Klaus Penzel
Klaus Penzel
Affiliation:
professor of church history in Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.
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Extract

The 1988 Centennial of the American Society of Church History should make us pause long enough to try to see Philip Schaff(1819–1893) whole and to appraise (if I may borrow a phrase) “the transient and permanent” in his life's work. Complementing George H. Shriver's centennial biography, Philip Schaff: Christian Scholarand Ecumenical Prophet (1987), in this essay I propose to sketch an intellectual portrayal of Schaff. My aim is to highlight and appraise briefly what is theologically significant in his total career as well as to place his life in the larger context of the history of theology and of the churches on both sides of the Atlantic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 207 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1990

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References

1. Schaff, Philip, America, ed, Miller, Perry (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. xxxv.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Schaff, “Autobiographical Reminiscences” (paginated copy by Carl M. Adler [1882] of the unpaginated original manuscript written intermittently, 1871–1890), p. 56, The Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

3. See Lange, Johann Peter, Das Evangelium nach Johannes (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1880). p. vii.Google Scholar

4. Schaff, , “Autobiographical Reminiscences,” p. 114.Google Scholar

5. Quoted by Stephan, Horst in Geschichte der deutschen euangelischen Theologie seit dem deutschen Ideatismus, ed. Schmidt, Martin, 2d rev. ed. (Berlin, 1960), P. 188.Google Scholar (Note: translations from the German are my own unless otherwise indicated.)

6. Hirsch, Emanuel, Geschichte der neueren euangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens, vol. 5 (Gütersloh, 1954) p. 414.Google Scholar

7. Ferdinand Christian Baur spoke contemptuously of the mediating theologians'“insipid and flat theology which availed itself of Schlciermacher's name merely to cover its scientific shortcomings” (Kirchengeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. E. Zeller [Tübingen, 1862”, p. 426).Google Scholar Ernst Troeltsch referred still more acidly to the “petty harmony and unctious inaccuracies of the so-called mediating theology which fraudulently uses Schleiermacher's name for its own purposes” (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 [Tübingen, 1913, p. 202).Google Scholar Karl Barth judged the theology of Alexander Schweizer, whom he called “the prototype of the mediating theologian,” to be “boring,” and he concluded that while the mediating theology reigned in German Protestantism, systematic theology tended “to hibernate,” and, consequently, the best minds gave up systematic theology for church history (Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, 2d ed. [Zollikon/Zürich, 1952], pp. 516, 522).Google ScholarHirsch, , Geschichte, pp. 410–414,Google Scholar offers in a brief compass the most balanced evaluation. For the best systematic discussion of the theology of this school, one should turn to Holte, Ragnar, DieVermittlungstheologie: Ihre theologischen Grundbegriffe kritisch untersucht (Uppsala, 1965).Google Scholar

8. Hirsch, , Geschichte, p. 430.Google Scholar

9. Stephan, , Geschichte der deutschen evarigelischen Theologie, p. 189.Google Scholar

10. Schoeps, Hans Joachim, Das andere Preussen, 2d ed. (Honef, 1957), p. 220Google Scholar and passim.

11. Schaff, Philip, Das Princip des Proteslantismus (Chambersburg, Pa., 1845), p. 10.Google Scholar

12. Meinecke, Friedrich, Die Entstehung des Historismus, vol. 3 of Werke, ed. Hinrichs, C. (Munich, 1965), p. 2.Google ScholarTroeltsch, Ernst, “Der deutsche Idealismus,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 (Tübingen, 1925), p. 535.Google Scholar

13. Miller, , “Editorial Introduction” to America, p. xx.Google Scholar

14. We owe a masterful interpretation of the Mercersburg Theology to Nichols's, James H.Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago, 1961),Google Scholar and, as editor, The Mercersburg Theology (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

15. Miller, , America, p. xxxv.Google Scholar

16. See Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge, 1957), p. x.Google Scholar

17. Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (London, 1890), P. 8.Google Scholar For a fuller discussion of Schaff's position as a church historian, see Lotz, David W., “Philip Schaff and the Idea of Church History,” in A Century of Church History: The Legacy of Philip Schaff, ed. Bowden, Henry W. (Carbondale, Ill., 1988), pp. 1–35,Google Scholar and my own essay, “Church History in Context: The Case of Philip Schaff,” in Our Common History as Christians, ed. John Deschner et al. (New York, 1975), pp. 217–260.Google Scholar

18. Schaff, Philip, “Reisebilder für den Kirchenfreund: Trient,” Der deutsche Kirchenfreund 8 (1855): 327.Google Scholar

19. See Schoeps, , Das andere Preussen, p. 72.Google Scholar

20. Schaff, Philip, What is Church History? trans. Nevin, John W. (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 118.Google Scholar

21. Nichols, , Romanticism in American Theology, p. 310.Google Scholar

22. Schaff, , Das Princip des Protestantismus, p. 101.Google Scholar

23. Philip, Schaff, “The Reunion of Christendom,” Evangelical Alliance Document 33 (1893): 8.Google Scholar

24. See Hudson, Winthrop S., American Protestantism (Chicago, 1961), P. 37,Google Scholar and Mead, Sidney E., “Prospects for the Church in America,” in The Future of the American Church, ed. Hefner, Philip J. (Philadelphia, 1968), p. 17.Google Scholar It is characteristic of Schaff's eclecticism that he never reflected systematically on these ecumenical options, nor was he apparently aware of a shift in his ecumenical thought. A comparison with his German contemporary Richard Rothe, who offered the most carefully reasoned combination of these ecumenical positions (Theologische Ethik, 3 vols. [Wittenberg, 1845–1848], pars. 998, 1186),Google Scholar is therefore instructive. Rothe held the idealistic dialectics to be applicable only to the Roman Catholic-Protestant relationship, while he employed Schleiermacher's romantic principle of individuality as a means only for comprehending the denominational diversity of Protestantism. However, for the modern period, Rothe believed, Christians of all churches should more and more embrace a third ecumenical alternative, that of an ethical union only of all those individuals who are working for the final, world-encompassing triumph of the kingdom of God. This was an ecumenical orientation that such liberal theologians as Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf Harnack—and even Schaff himself—would soon find congenial.

25. Schaff, David S., The Life of Philip Schaff in Part Antobiographical (New York, 1897), p. 323.Google Scholar

26. Schaff, Philip, Christ and Christianity (New York, 1885), P. 308.Google Scholar

27. Schaff, Philip, Theological Propaedeutic (New York, 1894), p. 228.Google Scholar

28. Letter of Mann to Schaff, 3 October 1882, quoted by Späth, A., D.Wilhelm Julius Mann (Reading, Pa., 1895), P. 73.Google Scholar

29. More detailed evaluations will be forthcoming in the introductions to my edition of “Selected Writings of Philip Schaff” (to be published by Mercer University Press).

30. Typical of Schaff's (and the whole Commentary's) precritical, supernaturalistic point of view, which, moreover, perceived no literary problem with the biblical texts since they are all to be taken at face value as faithfully and accurately representing what actually happened, was his discussion of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11). He rejected all theories that deny the miracle, for they all “owe their origin to a disbelief in the supernatural.” Then, confronting the remaining alternative of “historic truth or dishonest fiction,” he averred that the “historic truth is abundantly attested by the simplicity, vivacity and circumstantiality of the narrative, the four days in the tomb (vers. 39), and the good sense and moral honesty—to say the very least—of Lazarus and his sisters, the Evangelist, and Christ Himself” (Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, vol. 3 of the New Testament [John], p. 339).Google Scholar This is what Herbert Hovenkamp recently called the “essentially positivistic stance” that evangelical biblical scholars in the United States at that time maintained. For them, “nothing existed between historical and non-historical—no myths, symbols, epics, or poetic expressions.”“American orthodoxy,” he concluded in words that apply to Schaff's exegesis and Lange's Commentary as well, “was a long way from seeing the need to be rescued from its facts” (Science and Religion in America, 1800–1860 [Philadelphia, 1978], pp. 73, 78).Google Scholar

31. Schaff, , “Autobiographical Reminiscences,” p. 15.Google Scholar

32. See Marsden's, George informative essay “The Collapse of American Evangelical Academia,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed. Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (Notre Dame and London, 1983), pp. 219–264.Google Scholar

33. Seen. 17 above.

34. Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Brief Outline on the Study of Theology, trans. Tice, Terrence N. (Richmond, Va., 1966), p. 21Google Scholar (par. 9).