Tuesday, October 21, 2025

"​​In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity" ~ Rupertus Meldenius

 "​​In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity"

~ Rupertus Meldenius, German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century

https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/essentials-unity-non-essentials-liberty-all-things

quote:

​In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity

Mark Ross

Philip Schaff, the distinguished nineteenth-century church historian, calls the saying in our title “the watchword of Christian peacemakers.” Often attributed to great theologians such as Augustine, it comes from an otherwise undistinguished ​German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century, ​​Rupertus Meldenius. The phrase occurs in a tract on Christian unity written (circa 1627) during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), a bloody time in European history in which religious tensions played a significant role. The saying has found great favor among subsequent writers such as Richard Baxter, and has since been adopted as a motto by the Moravian Church of North America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Might it serve us well as a motto for every church and for every denomination today?

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