The Development of the Church: "The Principle of Protestantism" and other Historical Writings of Philip Schaff

by Philip Schaff, David R. Bains (Editor), Theodore Louis Trost (Editor), John Williamson Nevin (Translator), Leigh Eric Schmidt (Foreword by)

Overview

Philip Schaff, the founder of church history in America, was widely celebrated in his later career. Soon after his arrival from Germany, however, his Principle of Protestantism (1845) was stiffly denounced for its favorable attitude toward Roman Catholicism, harsh critique of denominationalism, and theory of historical progress leading to a church that would be both Evangelical and Catholic. Charles Hodge's review of the book provided the most cogent analysis of its implications for American Christianity. Schaff further clarified his understanding of progress in What Is Church History? (1846) and "German Theology and the Church Question" (1853). Together, these early writings of the Mercersburg theology set forth the parameters of what later generations would call the ecumenical movement. This edition carefully preserves these texts while providing extensive introductions, annotations, bibliography, and a glossary of key names to orient the reader and facilitate further scholarship. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series presents attractive, readable, scholarly, modern editions of the key writings of the nineteenth-century theological movement led by Philip Schaff and John Nevin. It aims to introduce the academic community and the broader public more fully to Mercersburg's unique blend of American and European, Reformed and Catholic theology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532610202
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	01/19/2017
Series:	Mercersburg Theology Study Series , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	424
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Philip Schaff (1819-93) was a professor at Mercersburg Seminary and Union Theological Seminary, and nineteenth-century America's leading church historian.

David R. Bains is the S. Louis and Ann W. Armstrong Professor of Religion at Samford University. His histories of theology, worship, and religious architecture have appeared in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity and The Encyclopedia of Religion in America among others.


Theodore Louis Trost is Professor of Religious Studies and New College at the University of Alabama. His writings include Douglas Horton and the Ecumenical Impulse in American Religion.
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.
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.