The Principle of Protestantism

I've just finished The Principle of Protestantism by Philip Schaff. It's a fascinating little book. It was delivered as an inauguration address in German, when Schaff was just 25 and newly emigrated to America from Germany to take up a post in a new seminary with just one other member of the teaching staff. Schaff would become one of the most important Church Historians of the 19th century, and freshly landed in America he had plenty to say for himself.

Most striking to me were three (interconnected) things that run throughout the book:

1. An incredibly positive evaluation of other church traditions then and in the past, coupled with a strong belief in the truth of reformed protestantism.
2. The importance of the church uniting, yet a understanding that protestant distinctives not be compromised in any way.
3. That the church is growing and developing in life and doctrine throughout history.

This Hegelian influenced, absolute confidence in progress is astonishing. As Christians we often hear about how the liberal belief in progress has been destroyed by the two world wars of the 20th century, but I have never read it so strongly held. For Schaff "Protestantism is the principle of movement, of progress in the history of the church; progress, not such as may go beyond the Bible and Christianity, but such as consists in an ever-extending knowledge of the Bible itself, and an ever-deepening appropriation of Christianity as the power of a divine life, which is destined to make all things new" (p. 201, emphasis his).

However, Schaff is no naive optimist as 'it must not be forgotten however, in connection with this that there is a corresponding movement also on the part of evil, towards that which is worse, Light and darkness, the wheat and the tares, grow together till their development shall become complete' (p.222).

This is strange to my ears, and I don't know what to make of it.

This principle of progress runs throughout the book and informs all of his observations on the history of the Church. Protestantism he sees not as the rediscovery of the truth held by the church fathers, but as a development of doctrine (he lists justification by faith, and the authority of scripture, as the material and formal principle of the Reformation) against a church which thought it had the truth nailed down, and the infiniteness depths of God with it. He finds the two 'diseases' of the church of his day to be rationalism and sectarianism. And yet he finds God working in both. The scientific method is a wonderful gift to the church to aid its understanding of the bible and the world - and yet rationalism is still a deadly disease to war against. All the different denominations and nationalities (America as melting pot comes through very clearly) have lessons for each other which must not be reduced to common-denominator Christianity for the sake of unity - and yet the division in the church is a horrendous sin.

The trouble is, I just don't know whether I can accept the idea of historical progress which for Schaff is such a fruitful way of understanding God's working in the world. However, I can't think of an argument against it of the top of my head.

PS Incidentally the other fascinating thing about Schaff, which I have found in many 19th century writers is that he is more than willing to make sweeping generalisations about the character of different nations. In the different nations he is happy to see the strengths (which he hopes will be combined in America), but he is clear that he thinks Germany is pretty great. Here is a taster:

the proper home of Protestant theology is Germany, and hence we may say that those who refuse to take account of German theology, set themselves in fact against the progress of Protestantism...We wish not to depreciate in the least the merits acquired in former ties, by the Dutch and the English in particular, in the way of biblical study...The German is always disposed rather to put an undue value on what is foreign, and has long since appropriated the results of these investigations and worked them into the process of his own cultivation. But what is all this beside the gigantic creations of German theology! All its heresies cannot destroy my respect for it...for only an archangel can become a devil. As England and America would not have been able at all to produce so fearful an enemy of Christianity as David Fridrich Strauss, so must they have been much less able to meet him with a proper refutation; and I shudder at times to think of the desolation his writings must occasion, if they should come to be much read-which may God prevent-in this country. (p.202)

You can't help but smile a little.