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Honest and earnest controversy, conducted in a Christian and catholic spirit, promotes true and lasting union. Polemics looks to Irenics — the aim of war is peace. — Philip Schaff, Preface to The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. 1
Among the many invaluable resources available at Log College Press is the three-volume ‘symbolical library’ known as the The Creeds of Christendom (1877) by Philip Schaff. If this set is not on a shelf in your library, it can nevertheless easily be a useful part of your digital library (you can download it here).
The First Volume is “a doctrinal history of the Church, so far as it is embodied in public standards of faith.”
The Second Volume contains the Scripture Confessions, the ante-Nicene Rules of Faith, the Ecumenical, the Greek, and the Latin Creeds, from the Confession of Peter down to the Vatican Decrees. It includes also the best Russian Catechism and the recent Old Catholic Union Propositions of the Bonn Conferences.
The Third Volume is devoted to the Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinistic, and the later Protestant Confessions of Faith. The documents of the Third Part (pp. 707–876) have never been collected before.
The creeds and confessions are given in the original languages from the best editions, and are accompanied by translations for the convenience of the English reader.
The Reformation-era creeds and confessions are found in Volume 3. One might well compare this volume to the excellent four-volume set of Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in Translation (2008-2014), edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. There is a great deal of overlap and yet there are differences in the scope of both works. Schaff’s historical study and collection of confessional documents throughout the centuries was ground-breaking in its day, and still worthy of study in the 21st century.
