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Book Review: Phillip Schaff. Portrait Of An Immigrant Theologian, Barbara Dobschütz

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Living in the light of a larger world experience, Philip Schaff, a Swiss educated in Germany and living in America, became one of the nineteenth century's foremost church historians. As a biblical scholar and theologian, Schaff became an advocate of the Mercersburg theology or "mediating evangelical theology." Schaff's intellectual and theological development, Gary Pranger's recent portrait argues, was formed in the context of an European-American exchange. Schaff's immigrant experience also provided the basis on which his later achievements as an advocate for ecumenical cooperation would become possible. Furthermore, Pranger's thesis contends that Schaff's own experience mirrored the nineteenth century world …