The grand requisite for the theologian is not that he have no preconceptions, but that his preconceptions be just, and such as the nature of the case demands. Without being fully possessed, beforehand, with the Christian faith, a man can rightly understand neither the Holy Scriptures nor the history of the church.
Philip Schaff, on why “the greatest masters” in church history end up with an ever-expanding, universalizing vision of Christ and his church:
The ultra-Protestant fanatical opposition to the Catholic church must cease. The general disposition now is to break away from the narrow apologetic and polemic interest of a particular confession or party, the colored spectacles of which allow but a dim and partial view of the Saviour’s majestic person. We wish to be guided solely by the spirit of impartial truth; and truth, at the same time, always best vindicates itself by the simple exhibition of its substance and historical course. Christianity can never be absolutely fitted to the last of a fixed human formula, without losing her dignity and majesty; and her history may claim, for its own sake, to be thoroughly investigated and represented, sine ira et studio [“without anger or zeal”], without any impure or loveless designs. The greatest masters in this field become more and more convinced, that the boundless life of the church can never be exhausted by any single sect or period, but can be fully expressed only by the collective Christianity of all periods, nations, confessions, and individual believers; that the Lord has never left himself without a witness; that, consequently, ever period has its excellencies, and reflects, in its own way, the image of the Redeemer.
Newman famously (and incorrectly) said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” Schaff might have replied: “To be deep in history is to cease to be sectarian and parochial.” That challenge cuts in all directions, implicating any narrow, polemical vision of the church—regardless of which communion you belong to.
Philip Schaff, explaining the necessary prerequisite for the “organic development” view of church history:
The right application of the theory of development depends altogether on having beforehand a right view of positive Christianity, and being rooted and grounded in it, not only in thought, but also in heart and experience.
Currently reading: Philip Schaff, Historian and Ambassador of the Universal Church: Selected Writings by Philip Schaff 📚
Finished reading: On Preaching by H.B. Charles Jr. 📚
Wilhelm Löhe: “Mission is nothing but the one church of God in its movement—the realization of the one universal, catholic church.”
Horace Bushnell (1848):
Probably never until now has the world been ready to conceive the true idea of a comprehensive Christianity. Nor is it ready now, save in part. The idea itself is yet in its twilight, dimly seen, only by a few—by none save those who are up to watch for the morning.
(One of the epigraphs from a volume of Philip Schaff’s selected writings.)
Paul Kingsnorth: “The kind of people who think that the Great Library of Alexandria contained ‘exabytes’ worth of information' rather than the collected fruits of hard-won wisdom are lost before they ever sit down to their datasets.”
Watched: American Gangster 🍿
some snow on the mountains yesterday
