Digital Logos Edition
In The Creeds of Christendom, Philip Schaff offers a critical analysis of the most important and fully developed expressions of faith. Through the words of the creeds, Schaff explains that honest controversy can produce lasting union, and that the theological controversies of the historic church have made the present church stronger. Schaff writes these volumes for a church divided, and begs a multitude of denominations to explore their common origins and common beliefs.
Volume 2 of The Creeds of Christendom contains the confessions found in Scripture, including those by Peter, Thomas, and others. Using Scriptural accounts and apostolic testimony, Schaff explores the relationship between the Bible and the early creeds. He also discusses at length the ecumenical creeds of the Ante-Nicene and Nicene periods, such as the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, as well as various rules of faith and early baptismal creeds. The personal confessions of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origin, Cyril, and others are discussed.
The second half of this volume is devoted to a detailed discussion of the important creeds of the Roman Catholic Church, including more than 150 pages on the Council of Trent and the various papal encyclicals of the nineteenth century.
With Logos, this important work by Philip Schaff is easier to read than ever before! The Scripture texts link to your Greek and Hebrew texts and English translations. And your digital library gives you the ease and flexibility to read Schaff alongside the primary texts of the key figures in church history, such as Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Church Fathers.
In the development of the discipline of church history in the United States, few scholars played a more important role than the Swiss-born, German-educated immigrant Philip Schaff. His model of careful, accurate, comprehensive, and irenic scholarship . . . remains worthy of admiration and emulation.
—R. Graham, professor of American church history, North Park Theological Seminary
No scholar of his generation has interested me so much. He was broad, powerful, a man of great genius.
Philip Schaff wanted to be remembered as a Christian scholar, and he pursued this scholarship in the context of his grand and optimistic ecumenical vision . . . Schaff was, in his own words, an inveterate hoper.
—George Shriver
Philip Schaff (1819–1893) was born in Chur, Switzerland. He was educated in Germany at Tübingen, Halle, and Berlin, where he studied under August Neander. In 1843, he moved to America and became a professor of church history and biblical literature at the German Reformed Theological Seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
During that time, he edited a hymnal, worked on the liturgy in the German Reformed Church, and edited a translation of the Heidelberg Catechism. The English translation of his History of the Apostolic Church appeared in 1853. Schaff remained at Mercersburg until 1863, when the Civil War forced the seminary to close.
In 1870, Schaff became a professor at Union Theological Seminary. During his tenure there, he held the chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism, the chair of Hebrew and cognate languages, the chair of sacred literature, and the chair of church history. He also served on the committee that translated the American Standard Version.
Schaff also authored or edited the History of the Christian Church, Early Church Fathers, and the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. He is remembered as one of America’s foremost church historians of the nineteenth century.
“Canon IX.—If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified, in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will: let him be anathema.” (Page 112) |
“Canon XI.—If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost,1 and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favor of God: let him be anathema.” (Page 113) |
“Canon XII.—If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified: let him be anathema.” (Page 113) |
“Canon XXIV.—If any one saith, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof: let him be anathema.” (Page 115) |
“If any one saith, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened [to him]: let him be anathema.” (Page 117) |