It is a concept related to a communal theology and opposed to committed differences, which can cause unavoidable tension or friction, and is rooted in the ideals of pacifism[citation needed].
Desiderius Erasmus was a Christian humanist and reformer, in the sense of checking clerical abuses, honoring inner piety, considering reason as meaningful in theology as in other ways.
The 1589 Examen pacifique de la doctrine des Huguenots by Henry Constable proved influential, for example on Christopher Potter and William Forbes.
[8] The 1628 Syllabus aliquot synodorum was a bibliography of the literature of religious concord, compiled by Jean Hotman, Marquis de Villers-St-Paul decades earlier, and seen into print by Hugo Grotius using the pseudonym "Theodosius Irenaeus," with a preface by Matthias Bernegger.
It led to Thomas James mining Marcantonio de Dominis and Paolo Sarpi, and making efforts to claim Witzel for the Protestant tradition; to the arguments of Gallicanism being welcomed but also treated as particularly insidious; and an irenist such as Francis a Sancta Clara being attacked strongly by firm Calvinists.
Examples marked out by title are: Isaac Newton wrote an Irenicum (unpublished manuscript); it supported a latitudinarian position in theology, derived from a review of church history.
[16]It is in that light that he comments on the irenists' succession: Erasmus, Cassander, Jacob Acontius, Grotius, then John Dury, who spent much time on a proposed reconciliation of Lutherans and Calvinists.