Philip Schaff

Philip Schaff (January 1, 1819 - October 20, 1893) was born in Switzerland, educated in Germany by a Protestant theologian and church historian, who lived and taught in the United States for most of his adult life. Schaff was born in Schur, Switzerland, and was educated at the Gymnasium of Stuttgart. At the universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin, he was consistently influenced by Ferdinand Christian Baur and Schmid, Friedrich August Toluc and Julius Müller, David Strauss and, above all, Johann August Wilhelm Neander. In 1841, in Berlin, he received a bachelor of theology and passed exams for professors. He then traveled to Italy and Sicily as a mentor to Baron Krischer. In 1842, he was a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin, where he lectured on exegesis and church history. In 1843, he was called to become a professor of church history and biblical literature at the German Reformed Theological Seminary in Mercedes, Pennsylvania, then the only seminary in the church in America. Schuff stayed in England during his journey and met Edward Pusey and other tractor drivers. His introduction, The Principle of Protestantism, spoken in German in Reading, PA, in 1844 and published in German with an English version of John Williamson Nevin, was a pioneering work in English in the field of symbolism (that is, authoritative church service). formulations of religious teachings in creeds or confessions). This address and the "theology of Mersersburg", which he taught, seemed to someone too Catholic, and he was accused of heresy. But at the Synod in York in 1845, he was unanimously acquitted. Schaff traveled to Europe in 1854, representing American German churches on a church diet in Frankfurt and at a Swiss pastoral conference in Basel.