Thomas E. Peck on the Mercersburg school of history

[Reformed Covenanter]

... Professor [Philip] Schaff, for example, who is not only a fine scholar and a man of great learning, but, I have no doubt, receives, ex animo, the doctrines of the Heidelberg Catechism, is disposed to apologise for the errors and abuses in the church as belonging to a particular stage of development, where, as it appears to us, fidelity to the truth and loyalty to his Master would have required him to judge and to pronounce according to the law and the testimony. Mr. [J. W.] Nevin, who was for some time his colleague at Mercersburg, has gone much further, and has applied the pantheistic theory of development in such a way as to reach the result of a sort of mixture of popery and eutychianism. ...

For more, see Thomas E. Peck on the Mercersburg school of history.

 

[Taylor]

It’s interesting that you post this, as I almost purchased the works of Emanuel Vogel Gerhart recently. As I looked him up, I keep seeing his "ties to Mercersberg theology," and thus to Philip Schaff.

Any thoughts on Gerhart?

 

[RamistThomist]

At the end of the day, I think Schaff and Nevin are far apart in their approach to Rome. Nevin wanted to convert but even more, he wanted not to. Schaff, on the other hand, is pretty violent in his comments about Rome in his church history set.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

It’s interesting that you post this, as I almost purchased the works of Emanuel Vogel Gerhart recently. As I looked him up, I keep seeing his "ties to Mercersberg theology," and thus to Philip Schaff.

Any thoughts on Gerhart?

See a book review that I wrote several years ago.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

At the end of the day, I think Schaff and Nevin are far apart in their approach to Rome. Nevin wanted to convert but even more, he wanted not to. Schaff, on the other hand, is pretty violent in his comments about Rome in his church history set.

Yes, I think that this assessment is fair.