Theology Today - Vol 53, No. 2 - July 1996 - BOOK REVIEW - Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion

254 - Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion

Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion
By Stephen R. Graham

Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995. 266 pp. $22.00.

Philip Schaff is one of the enduring figures in the history of American Christianity. His life represents the discovery by a European of the new cultural world that was taking shape on the North American continent. When a recent immigrant, he was critical of its new-fangled ways. But he later came to believe that America held the promise of overcoming the

256 - Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion

fateful divisions that had marked Christianity in its European residence. From our perspective one hundred years later, these hopes seem unduly optimistic, and we might question Schaff's influence. Stephen Graham makes the case, however, that Schaff deserves to be known and appreciated far beyond the circle of church historians who look to him as founder of their professional society.

Schaff was born in Switzerland in 1819 and received his training at Halle, Tübingen, and Berlin under great figures like Neander and Tholuck. At the age of twenty-five he accepted, with some regret, the challenge of an appointment at a new German Reformed Seminary on the frontier at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Here he joined John Williamson Nevin, and together they crafted a theological position that was an alternative to the regnant revivalism of the day. Viewed in the perspective of American history, the "Mercersburg Theology" was a romantic reaction to the reductive and instrumental rationalism of the era. From the point of view of the Christian tradition, it represented the recovery, preservation, and renewal of vital elements reaching back to its earliest history. Much of Schaff's life work as a historian was dedicated to making accessible the sources of the tradition, for example, writings of the Fathers, or new translations of the Scriptures, so readily lost from the consciousness of nineteenth-century Americans.

Cosmos in the Chaos offers a view of Schaff that brings front and center his engagement with his adopted homeland, downplaying both his efforts to render America intelligible in Germany and his sustained scholarship. While not failing to note these labors, the burden of Graham's chapters is to trace Schaff's changing view of the new world through a series of issues that developed from the early career at Mercersburg into the later years at Union Theological Seminary in New York. His early revulsion against the sectarianism he encountered in the new world, for example, turned into accepting denominations as a new means to institutionalize the tradition. His rejection of "Romanism" metamorphosed into eventual appreciation for the Catholic Church as embodiment of traditions originating in early Christianity. He came to champion the singular American achievement in rendering church and state separate, and he discovered the power of voluntary associations to address human and social challenges. Graham's most arresting suggestion is that Schaff is best seen as anticipating the insights into the role of Christianity in American society that were only later developed by H. R. Niebuhr.

Philip Schaff has long served as source and canon for American church historians. Cosmos in the Chaos explains why this has been so and suggests that Schaff is relevant for others as well at the close of the twentieth century. Stephen Graham's engagingly written book has made this remarkable figure, readily accessible. That is a challenge readers of this journal ought to find worthy of them.

JOHN F. WILSON
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ