A Chapter in The History of The Ecumenical Quest: Schelling and Schleiermacher

Abstract

It must appear somewhat strange that the ecumenical ideas which were developed by German Protestantism in the first half of the nineteenth century have never, to the best of my knowledge, been treated systematically and exhaustively, especially in view of the fact that these decades were unusually fruitful in producing various serious contributions to the discussion of the question of the unity and disunity of the Church.1The brief remarks, for instance, in RouseNeill (eds.),A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, are quite inadequate.2I have set myself the task in this paper merely to call attention to two of these nineteenth century German contributions to the ecumenical discussion, namely Schelling's and Schleiermacher's.