Symbolics”; then to the chair in Hebrew; third, to the chair in Sacred Literature-New Testament Exegesis; and last, only upon Roswell Hitchcock’s death in 1887, to the Washburn Chair of Church History.230 This list affords an insight into the highly generalized approach to theological study in nineteenth-century America. As German historian Adolf Harnack remarked upon Schaff’s death in 1893, he was the last great “generalist” of church history.231 Schaff himself modestly believed that the next generation of church historians would throw his own “preparatory labors into the shade.” He was confident that church history would be for them “the favorite branch of theological study.”232
In poor health the last years of his life, Schaff delivered his resignation letter in March 1893. In it he wrote:
Teaching has been my life for more than fifty years.… The growing importance of the department of Church history requires the undivided attention of a first-class scholar. The Seminary … must make satisfactory provision for the next years. The interests of an institution are far more important than those of any individual. The workmen will die, but the work must go on.233
Schaff received honorary degrees from the University of St. Andrews, Marshall College, the University of the City of New York, Amherst, and the University of Berlin. Schaff’s former pupil, Arthur Cushman McGiffert, was appointed to fill the Washburn Professorship of Church History in his place, to carry on the work when “the workmen die.”
Among Schaff’s voluminous publications are (to sample some of the most important): The Principle of Protestantism (1845); What Is Church History? (1846); History of the Apostolic Church (1854); America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States of North America (1855 [1854]); Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis: The Creeds of Christendom (3 volumes, 1877); The Revision of the English Version of the Holy Scriptures (1873, 1877); Through Bible Lands (1878); The Person of Christ (1882); The (Schaff-Herzog) Religious Encyclopediae (3 vols., 1882–1884, 1887)234; A Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version (1883); St. Augustine, Melanchthon, Neander (1886); History of the Christian Church (7 volumes, 1882–1892); and Theological Propaedeutic (2 parts, 1892). “The Reunion of Christendom” (1893) was delivered as Schaff’s last major public appearance at the World’s Parliament of Religions: Christian reunion had been a theme dear to his heart throughout his entire life.235 Schaff’s activities aside from teaching were so numerous that I here wish to highlight a few of the most important.
SCHAFF AND THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE
Schaff was active in both the American and international branches of the Evangelical Alliance.236 The Constitution of its American wing, dated 1870, declares that the aim of the Alliance was to promote evangelical union, “to counteract the influence of infidelity and superstition, especially in their organized forms”; to promote religious freedom everywhere and observance of the Lord’s day; to give supreme authority to the Bible; and to “correct immoral habits of society.”237 Although this statement does not target Roman Catholicism explicitly, it nevertheless makes clear the Alliance’s Protestant allegiance.238 Later, Schaff strongly denied that the Alliance was an “anti-popery society”; to the contrary, he claimed, it champions religious liberty wherever that is threatened.239
The records of the New York branch from November 1868 onward show that its organizers hoped to sponsor an international conference on American soil—the first such—as early as autumn 1869, but the Franco-Prussian War and other events precluded this date.240 With Schaff as organizer, the New York meeting was finally held from October 2 to 12, 1873. Schaff journeyed to Europe to solicit participation and ease Europeans’ anxiety about venturing across the ocean to the unknown wilds of America. On home soil, he took charge of most of the arrangements.241 Schaff considered the conference the high point of his life.242 Official delegates numbered 516, of whom 294 were from the United States.243 Fifteen thousand lay people and clergy attended various sessions. The conference was a major media event; even secular newspapers provided almost verbatim coverage.244 A large volume of conference papers, Evangelical Alliance Conference, 1873, edited by Schaff and S. Irenaeus Prime (former editor of the New-York Observer and co-organizer of the conference) was published in 1874.245
SCHAFF AND THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY
The American Society of Church History was founded on March 23, 1888 in Schaff’s home. He was elected the Society’s first President, serving until his death in 1893. Addressing the first general meeting of the Society on December 28, 1888, Schaff declared that ASCH was formed “for the purpose of cultivating church history as a science.” He hoped that the Society would be “catholic and irenical,” bringing together scholars who would aid “the cause of Christian union.”246 “The Society,” he wrote (prophetically) to his son after the meeting, “may become an important training school for rising historians.”247 On learning of the Society’s founding, Adolf von Harnack claimed that “America has put us in Europe to shame.”248 ASCH established a prize essay in Schaff’s honor (“The Schaff Prize in Church History”),249 and in December 1892 formally feted Schaff as the one to whom the Society owed its existence.250
An experimental union of ASCH in its early years with the American Historical Association was short-lived.251 J. Franklin Jameson later explained one reason for the failed merger: the Smithsonian, linked to the AHA, feared that Congress would not publish the Annual Reports of the AHA (what would become the Journal of the American Historical Association) at government expense if Christian theological materials were included.252 Church historians, one suspects, were too confessional for historians at colleges and universities who were struggling to establish their discipline in the academy as a science. In any event, the two societies broke official ties in 1906, and ASCH was reconstituted as an independent organization.253
SCHAFF AND THE NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS SERIES
In the 1880s, Schaff undertook to organize and edit two series of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Schaff planned to bring out about twenty-five volumes with the Christian Literature Company of Buffalo, the company that had earlier published the Ante-Nicene Fathers series edited by Arthur Cleveland Coxe.254 Schaff hoped to use some translations from the Tractarians’ Oxford Library of the Fathers, although he also solicited many new translations. Schaff himself was actively involved in Series 2 of NPNF only through Volume 2.255
The object of the series, Schaff wrote, “is historical, without any sectarian or partisan aim”256—unlike the Oxford Library, which had “an apologetic and dogmatic purpose” (namely, “to furnish authentic proof for the supposed or real agreement of the Anglo-Catholic school with the faith and practice of the ancient church before the Greek schism”257). In the promotional advertisement for the series, Schaff stated that the volumes would sell for $3.00 apiece.258
In 1885, Schaff solicited British and American contributors259 and devised a “Preliminary Prospectus.” He asked potential contributors to declare which patristic texts they proposed to translate afresh or to rework from earlier translations. Schaff allowed five years for the contributors to complete their tasks, but hoped for an earlier publication date. With the “Prospectus,” he enclosed a letter from the Christian Literature Company stating financial arrangements for the contributors.260 The “Prospectus” reveals that several patristic writers that Schaff had intended to include never made the Series (e.g., Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus Confessor, and Photius).261
Schaff originally hoped that (for example) Arthur Cleveland Coxe would take the Canons of the Ecumenical Councils and Vincent of Lerins’s Commonitorium; Benjamin B.
