Background
Charles Frederick was born on September 3, 1807 at Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States, the youngest son of Frederick David and Rosina (Rosenmiller) Schaeffer.
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Charles Frederick was born on September 3, 1807 at Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States, the youngest son of Frederick David and Rosina (Rosenmiller) Schaeffer.
Schaeffer attended Zion's parochial school in Philadelphia, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1827, studied for the ministry with his father and with his brother-in-law, Charles Rudolph Demme.
Charles Frederick Schaeffer was licensed by the Maryland and Virginia Synod in 1829, and was ordained by the West Pennsylvania Synod in 1831. After a short period as assistant to his brother, Frederick Christian, in New York, Schaeffer was pastor at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1830-34 and at Hagerstown, Maryland, 1834-40.
Meanwhile his growing reputation as a conservative Lutheran theologian brought him a call to the English professorship in the seminary of the Joint Synod of Ohio at Columbus, Ohio, and in May 1840 he entered on his new duties. He was ill fitted to thrive in that Grobian environment and before long got into serious difficulties with his students, his German colleague, Johann Friedrich Winkler, and several influential ministers. The board of directors demanded his resignation, which took effect in June 1843, and Schaeffer, his health permanently injured by overwork and malaria, withdrew to Lancaster, Ohio, where he served as pastor until December 1845.
Subsequently he was pastor at Red Hook, Dutchess County, New York, 1845-51 and of St. John's, Easton, Pennsylvania, 1851-56. In that year, after William Julius Mann had wisely declined the position, he was elected to the Ministerium of Pennsylvania's German professorship at the Gettysburg Theological Seminary. His accession to the Gettysburg faculty was a challenge to the liberal element in the General Synod and helped to hasten the breach between the General Synod and the Ministerium of Pennsylvania. For the next eight years, Gettysburg was a theological Medicine Hat. The storm broke in 1864 when the Ministerium of Pennsylvania left the General Synod and opened a seminary of its own in Philadelphia.
Leaving Gettysburg precipitately, Schaeffer became the first professor and chairman of the faculty of the Philadelphia Seminary, where, with Mann and Charles Porterfield Krauth, his congenial colleagues, he taught until a year before his death.
Schaeffer's literary work was of considerable importance to his denomination. He was the translator of J. F. Kurtz's Manual of Sacred History (1855) and of G. V. Lechler and Charles Gerok's The Acts of the Apostles (1869), Volume IV in the Schaff-Lange Commentary on the Holy Scriptures.
He made a revision of Johann Arndt's True Christianity (1868) and composed a commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, devotional rather than critical in purpose, which, condensed by his son-in-law, the Rev. Reuben Hill, was published as Volumes I and II of H. E. Jacobs' The Lutheran Commentary (1895).
His uneventful latter years in Philadelphia were, in spite of the affliction of deafness, also his happiest. He died on 23 November 1879.
Charles Frederick Schaeffer was the author of famous revisions of Philip Frederick Mayer's translation of Luther's Smaller Catechism (1816), that has become part of the life of the Lutheran Church in America. Besides, he also made a skillful revision of the common version of Johann Arndt's True Christianity (1868) and other works. His contributions to the Evangelical Review and to the Bibliotheca Sacra were solid and influential statements of the confessional position of the Lutheran Church.
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As representative of the strictly conservative and confessional party in the Lutheran Church, Schaeffer defended his position with great force in many publications.
Schaeffer was a gentleman of broad culture and polished manners. He was little of a fighter at heart.
On August 27, 1832, Schaeffer married Susanna, daughter of John George Schmucker, by whom he had a son and four daughters.
