Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theologians 9783666551307, 9783525551301

Citation preview

Refo500 Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon, (New Haven), Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Waco).

Volume 31

Matthew L. Becker (ed.)

Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theologians

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2197-0165 ISBN 978-3-666-55130-7 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, 37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch GmbH, Ochsenfurt

Contents

Matthew L. Becker Editor’s Introduction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Christine Helmer Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

7

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Anders Holm Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

Mark A. Seifrid Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

Hans Schwarz Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

99

Mark Mattes Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Roy A. Harrisville Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Lutz Mohaupt Adolf von Harless (1806–1879) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 David Ratke Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Matthew L. Becker Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

6

Contents

Christoph Barnbrock Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Carl S. Hughes Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Christoffer H. Grundmann Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Darrell Jodock Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Mark Oldenburg Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883) Carl E. Braaten Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Dietz Lange Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Index of Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Matthew L. Becker

Editor’s Introduction

This is a book about Lutheran theology in the “long nineteenth century,” that period between the political revolutions of the late eighteenth century and the end of the First World War.1 With respect to the history of Protestant theology, this era began with the publication of Schleiermacher’s Speeches (1799), written in the wake of Kant’s critical philosophy, and it ended with the rise of Dialectical Theology, which was inaugurated by Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans (1919) and directed against the liberal Protestant tradition begun by Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. The end of nineteenth-century Protestant theology could also be tied to the beginnings of the modern Ecumenical Movement, which gained momentum in the aftermath of “the Great War,” largely through the efforts of Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931), who is the focus of book’s final chapter. The book thus provides an introduction to fifteen Lutherans and one Reformed theologian who were active in this period. The one Reformed figure, Schleiermacher, has been so influential upon the development of Protestant theology, including its Lutheran stream, that his life and work are the focus of the initial chapter. Following the format of the essays in the companion volume on twentieth-century figures, each essay here covers the life, teachings, and abiding legacy of a given thinker.2 The goal of the authors has not been merely to identify how a specific individual was important in his own time and place, but to indicate why aspects of that person’s thinking might have a continuing significance for contemporary theological reflection. Hopefully readers of the book will gain deeper insight into our current theological milieu through an examination of these key figures who were active in the immediate wake of the Enlightenment and at a time when many Europeans were beginning to move beyond Christianity in search of other alternatives. 1 See David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 2 See Mark C. Mattes, ed., Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, Refo500 Academic Studies, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, vol. 10 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).

8

Matthew L. Becker

Overview of the Project The project as a whole was initiated by the journal Lutheran Quarterly and carried forward through conversations with Jörg Persch of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, “in order to determine how our recent past can help us shape our bearings in a new century.”3 Earlier versions of six of the essays (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Thomasius, Hofmann, Kähler, and Söderblom) were originally published in Lutheran Quarterly. In addition to Schleiermacher—who, along with Kant and Hegel, has to be included among those who have had the greatest influence upon the development of modern intellectual history—the thinkers who are examined here are ones who saw themselves as working within the Lutheran-Protestant tradition of theology. Nevertheless, the reader will quickly notice the remarkable differences among these individuals in how they understood Christian doctrine and applied it to their world. Twelve of the theologians presented here were Germans (one of whom became a U.S. citizen), two were Danish, one was Swedish, and one was American. Given the path-breaking significance of German theology in this century, one should not be surprised by the large number of chapters devoted to this tradition.4 No other English text provides an in-depth examination of these key figures and the implications of their theology for contemporary discussion. These are theologians who deserve to be better understood than they typically are, especially among English-speaking scholars. Each of the essays attempts to present its object in a new light and to show how that person not only gave shape to Lutheran theology at that time but also furthered the course of Christian thought itself.

Intellectual Background All of the theologians included here traced their theological heritage back to Martin Luther (1483–1546) and the reforms he initiated after 1517. Luther considered the apostolic gospel to be the heart of Christian doctrine since it announces the unconditional forgiveness of God in Christ for all sinners. Over against late-medieval theology, which taught that salvation is a cooperative process of human action and divine assistance, Luther became convinced that human beings lack the ability to do the good that his teachers had said was 3 Mattes, “Editor’s Preface,” Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, 7. 4 Karl Barth was largely correct when he once noted that German Protestant theology in the nineteenth century “was the signpost for theological endeavor elsewhere” (Karl Barth, The Humanity of God [Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960], 11). See also Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1973), which analyzes only German theologians.

Editor’s Introduction

9

possible and necessary for salvation. From his reading of Paul, he concluded that a person is “justified” or “right” before God through grace, for Christ’s sake, by faith alone (sola fide), apart from good works. In contrast to the divine law, whose primary purpose is to reveal the human incapacity to please God, the gospel or “good news” reveals the righteousness of Christ that is external to human beings and is given by God as a gift (sola gratia) to the one who trusts in Christ alone (solus Christus). Since sinners have been freed by Christ from the need to justify themselves before God, Luther stressed that they have been called to serve others freely in love. As a result of his growing conflict with the Roman officials, especially the Pope, Luther laid more and more stress on the sole sufficiency of Holy Scripture as the single norm (sola scriptura) by which all church teaching and practices are to be evaluated. While the Bible is an historical book, lying within it is the living Word of God which can be found nowhere else. The church’s authority resides in its setting forth the evangelical sense of the words of Scripture that witness to Jesus Christ, the living Word. Luther thus rejected Roman tradition as an authority, yet he also criticized Protestant sectarianism since the church is the historical body of Christ through whom God has deigned to confer divine grace (via preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and confession/holy absolution). If Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms (1529) have served as the principal compendia of evangelical faith, the first systematic presentation of evangelical doctrine was the Loci communes (1521) of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), which became a standard textbook among Lutheran students of theology for the next 300 years.5 It presents the “common places” or topics in a distinct order (God, creation, sin, the law, the gospel, etc.) and explicates them on the basis of Scripture and the gospel. This same gospel orientation is evident in the Augsburg Confession, which Melanchthon largely wrote and which was read publicly before the Holy Roman Emperor on June 25, 1530. Of its twenty-eight articles, the fourth, on justification, articulates the “chief article of faith” that informs and shapes the others, including those on “abuses that have been corrected” (i. e., distribution of only the Eucharistic host, forced celibacy of priests, the mass as a human work and sacrifice, satisfactions, monastic vows, the exercise of ecclesial oversight). A central claim of the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, which Melanchthon published a year later in response to Roman criticism, is that “Evangelicals” teach the apostolic, catholic faith. The Apology further underscores the centrality of the doctrine of justification and defines it primarily (but not exclusively) as the forensic or declarative imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner. 5 I am here using the term “evangelical” in the sense that Luther himself gave it, namely, being oriented toward the gospel or good news (Greek: “evangel”) about Jesus Christ.

10

Matthew L. Becker

Although Luther and Melanchthon never publicly disagreed with each other, their theologies differed in important respects, especially after 1530. These differences (e. g., regarding the authority of the Pope, the “bondage of the human will” before God, and the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper) led to serious doctrinal controversies that agitated the Lutheran Church, mostly in German lands. So-called “Gnesio-Lutherans” (“true Lutherans”) attacked Melanchthon and his students (“Philippists”) for their divergences from Luther’s teaching and the original version of the Augsburg Confession. (Melanchthon had made alterations to a few of its articles, which contributed to these theological disagreements.) After decades of conflict, unity was restored through the Formula of Concord, which had been authored by Jakob Andreae (1528–1590) and Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586). The latter’s other works, especially his dogmatics (the Loci theologici), his examination of the Council of Trent, and his monograph on the two natures in Christ, further defined the nature of Lutheran doctrine in this period and became classics in their own right for later thinkers, including those treated here. In 1580 key Lutheran documents were published together as The Book of Concord.6 Prefaced by the three ecumenical creeds, this book includes the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Apology, Luther’s catechisms and Schmalcald Articles, Melanchthon’s treatise on the pope, and the Formula of Concord. While not every Lutheran church, such as the Scandinavian Folk Churches, is committed to all of the documents in The Book of Concord, most stress the centrality of the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s catechisms. Nearly all of the nineteenth-century theologians examined below emphasized their continuity with the “spirit of Luther” and the formulations of doctrine contained in these classic evangelical texts. The use of Aristotelian terms and concepts in the Formula of Concord paved the way for the scholastic development of Lutheran theology in the seventeenth century. This movement came to be known as “Lutheran Orthodoxy,” whose principal proponents wrote several large dogmatic projects that attempted to sharpen evangelical Lutheran teaching over against Calvinism and Catholicism and to demonstrate its scriptural basis, especially regarding Christology, the Lord’s Supper, and salvation. These Lutheran theologians frequently appealed to neo-Aristotelian philosophy and to scholastic metaphysics that were then dominant among the scientifically-minded in Europe in order to make sense of the dogmatic material that had been handed down in the older Lutheran tradition. In addition to Holy Scripture, whose nature and attributes (e. g., its inspiration, perspicuity, and infallibility) were extensively defined over against the 6 See The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, trans. Charles Arand et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).

Editor’s Introduction

11

Catholic insistence on papal infallibility, these seventeenth-century theologians also appealed to the Lutheran Confessions and to Luther’s own writings as dogmatic authorities. In the process these thinkers developed very intricate theological systems that frequently contained a seemingly endless number of artificial distinctions. The greatest achievement in this period was the nine-volume Loci theologici (1609–1622) of Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), who used the dialectical method of scholasticism to build on the Reformation tradition (primarily in conversation with the work of Chemnitz) and to defend the catholicity and apostolicity of Lutheran teaching. According to Gerhard, the purpose of theology is to teach sinful human beings what they need to know and do from Holy Scripture “in order to attain true faith in Christ and holiness of life.”7 Instructed by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God—who produces a salutary effect upon the theologian’s heart and life and provides illumination about the divine mysteries— the theologian is thus equipped “to inform others concerning these divine mysteries and the way of salvation, and to vindicate heavenly truth from the aspersions of its foes, so that human beings, abounding in true faith and good works, are led to the kingdom of heaven.”8 Other important representatives of Lutheran Orthodoxy include Abraham Calov (1612–86), Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1617–88), who was Gerhard’s nephew, and David Hollaz (1648–1713). Their textbooks were used for more than a century in German and Scandinavian universities and even in a few American seminaries. Although the classic period of Lutheran Orthodoxy came to an end in the early eighteenth century, several later theologians (e. g., Walther, Krauth) regularly took their bearings from these classic seventeenth-century thinkers, whose authority ranked only below the Scriptures, the Lutheran Confessions, and the writings of Luther. The Compendium of Johann Wilhelm Baier (1647–95), which organized and summarized the principal teachings of the older dogmaticians, remained a classic educational resource for confessional Lutherans well into the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The seeds for the next development in Lutheran theology were also sown during the seventeenth century. Gerhard and some of his contemporaries wrote many devotional texts that prepared the way for Pietism, a movement of spiritual renewal that was otherwise critical of the polemical and scholastic character of much of Lutheran Orthodoxy. Following Gerhard’s lead, later Pietists stressed 7 John Gerhard, as quoted in Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed., ed. Heinrich Schmid, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1889), 15. 8 Gerhard, as quoted in Doctrinal Theology, 18. The multiple editions and frequent reprinting of Schmid’s compendium are a further important indicator that seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatics continued to be studied throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

12

Matthew L. Becker

the insufficiency of objective theological knowledge and the need for a living faith in God and a moral piety that issued from it. Inaugurated in 1675 when Philipp Spener (1635–1705) published his influential Pia desideria (“Heartfelt Longings”), Pietism also criticized the German territorial churches for their ties to political authority, their liturgical formalism, and their perceived clericalism. Lutheran Pietists emphasized a non-dogmatic, practical “theology of the heart” over against one of “the head,” although some of the differences between Orthodoxy and Pietism have occasionally been exaggerated.9 For Spener, faith is not merely knowledge and confidence in God, but a living power that produces an actual experience of spiritual renewal. Thus Spener viewed regeneration as an inner transformation, an experience of “new birth.” According to him, the justification of the sinner is directly the result of the indwelling Christ, who lives in the heart of the individual believer. Many Pietists reacted against the institutional church of their day by establishing small-group “conventicles” for prayer and Bible study (despite their illegal status). Heeding Spener’s insistence that reborn Christians must seek a higher degree of spiritual perfection, many Pietists examined their own and others’ “inner spiritual experiences” for signs of a living faith and a life that bore spiritual fruit. This introspection, however, led some to accuse Pietists of fostering a moralistic and anthropocentric piety, of watering down the doctrinal differences among Christians, and of tending to be legalistic and judgmental toward others. Nevertheless, many Pietists, especially August Francke (1663– 1727), worked diligently to establish new congregations, alleviate social problems, and further the work of schools, hospitals, and missionaries. But Pietism was not a monolithic phenomenon. Halle Pietism, which was shaped by Francke, tended to focus on ways of bringing about a distinct conversion experience through the effective preaching of the law, whereas Württemberg Pietism tended to stress study of the Bible as a way of strengthening faith and morals. This latter form of Pietism is perhaps best reflected in the biblical scholarship of Johann A. Bengel (1687–1752). Still another form of Pietistm was located at Herrnhut, which had been established by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (1700–60), and which had a decisive impact on Schleiermacher, who later described himself as a “Herrnhuter of a higher order.” Just as Lutheran Orthodoxy served as an important resource for many nineteenth-century Lutherans, so, too, did Pietism. For example, the so-called “Religious Awakening” (die Erweckungsbewegung), which erupted in the early 1800s 9 For example, Hollaz’s Examen theologico-acroamaticum (1707), which is “the last great doctrinal system produced by Lutheran Orthodoxy,” reflects in places emphases that are more often associated with Pietism (Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology, 3rd ed., trans. Gene J. Lund [St. Louis: Concordia, 1968], 305).

Editor’s Introduction

13

—in concert with the cultural Romanticism of the time and the growing German nationalism that followed the defeat of Napoleon—clearly bore similarities to earlier forms of Lutheran Pietism. Both movements of piety emphasized the individual’s living faith-relationship with Jesus Christ, the experience of spiritual rebirth and renewal, the need for study of the Bible, and the importance of social engagement and missionary outreach with the gospel. During the eighteenth century—when J.S. Bach (1685–1750) was creatively juxtaposing theological elements in Lutheran Orthodoxy and aspects of Spener’s “affective theology,” and when Copernicus’ conception of the solar system first gained widespread acceptance—the scientific and cultural revolutions that occurred had a profound effect upon how theology was undertaken. With the emergence of the modern period in the so-called “Age of Reason,” philosophy, the natural sciences, jurisprudence, and politics became more and more liberated from the authority of Christian institutions and ways of thinking, and this emancipation had significant implications for theological reflection. Scholars now began to investigate nature on the basis of empirical observation and experimentation. No longer did educated people see themselves and their world as the center of the universe, and yet at the same time many turned their critical, rational faculties toward a deeper understanding of the reality that surrounded them in an effort to control and manipulate it. “Sapere aude,” was how Kant defined the era’s motto in 1798: “Dare to be wise! Have courage to make use of your own understanding…”10 In other words, “Dare to be an autonomous individual.” Already in the seventeenth century René Descartes (1596–1650) had set forth a method of inquiry that cast doubt upon all metaphysical assertions. He defended his method of radical doubt (rejecting everything that can be doubted in the least) so as to arrive at an unshakeable philosophical foundation, namely, himself as a doubter. As a result of this “turn-to-the-subject,” the traditional, pre-modern Christian way of relating natural reason to supernatural revelation, wherein “faith” is prior to “understanding,” became gradually reversed. Now the thinking person’s reason, as it strove to be certain about actual knowledge, was prior to and above divine revelation and faith. Only by first establishing himself as a thinker, as a “thinking I,” could Descartes then take the next step of asking how he could have knowledge of that which is outside of him, the world and God. Descartes was himself convinced that the idea of God was innate, that “God is no deceiver,” and that in fact the concept of God—which he thought must be pro10 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17. The following paragraphs are adapted from my book, Fundamental Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 169 ff.

14

Matthew L. Becker

duced by the perfect, eternal, and almighty Supreme Being—is the inherent principle of all philosophical certainty, including the certainty that the world itself exists and that it can be understood rationally. Nevertheless, while Descartes held that the concept of God is the normative basis for the structure of human thought—and that the nonexistence of God is an impossible thought— later thinkers became less and less certain of the conceivability of God. Whereas Lutheran Orthodox theologians at least had tried to maintain the medieval unity between “the Book of Nature” and “the Book of Scripture,” Deists in England, France, and Germany made a sharp separation between the two and insisted that human reason is always the normative criterion of truth, also with respect to any supposed divine revelation. The desire to find a universal, rational criterion of religious truth was, in part, meant to move the various actual, historical religions and their adherents away from their religious differences—and the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that resulted in part from those contradictory religious claims—toward that upon which all rational people could agree. Over time outright hostility toward all “positive” religions, especially Christianity, would appear among the leading figures in the French Enlightenment and fuel some of the passions that became manifest in the French Revolution. That same anti-religious sentiment would later surface in various forms of nineteenth-century German ideology (e. g., Ludwig Feuerbach [1804– 72], Karl Marx [1818–83], Friedrich Nietzsche [1844–1900]). Bearing some affinities to emphases within Protestant Pietism (e. g., the critique of abstract Aristotelian metaphysics, the concern about individual experience, and criticism of institutional dogmas and liturgical forms) eighteenthcentury rationalist theologians attacked traditional Christian doctrines and sought to articulate a reasonable, moral theology free of metaphysical illusion. Through their radical criticism of accepted Christian dogma, particularly regarding the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, rationalists demonstrated their similarity not only to late-sixteenth-century Socinianism, a Polish anti-trinitarian movement that was named after its chief figure, Faustus Socinus (1539– 1604), but also to seventeenth-century Deism. The chief proponents of eighteenth-century German Protestant Rationalism were Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754), who argued that theology must be guided by clear and distinct concepts that accord with human reason. More and more, theology had to be guided by philosophy and rational thought. Wolffian theology thus centered on elaborate “rational proofs” for the existence of God. Theologians of this stripe also pointed to the emancipation of the sciences, including theology, from ecclesiastical control as an important consequence of the Reformation. In addition, they stressed that the real purpose of theology is a moral one, that is, to promote good behavior, improve human welfare, and increase “this-worldly” happiness.

Editor’s Introduction

15

Wolff ’s “proofs” for the reality of God were later critiqued by another Pietistturned-rationalist, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), whose critical philosophy marked the high point of the German Enlightenment. Kant placed sharp limits on human knowing, wherein all knowledge arises from a synthesis of sense experience of reality and the mind’s own ability to shape that experience into the form in which all experiences are received and understood. According to him, human reason is incapable of knowing reality as such, the “thing in itself” (Ding an sich), and can only speak about how it appears phenomenologically to the human knower. A major outcome of Kant’s metaphysics—which also included strong criticism of the traditional arguments for the reality of God as they had been articulated in western philosophical theology—was his rejection of the possibility of establishing any metaphysical truths. He thus prevented human access to ultimate reality as an object of knowledge, although he did “posit” God, freedom, and immortality as postulates of “practical,” moral reason, that is, as necessary for the conduct of one’s life in this evil world. In his book, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793) Kant thus largely reduced the content of Christianity to a matter of moral teaching that is given through Jesus. Contrary to other philosophers of his day, however, Kant acknowledged the presence of “radical evil” in human beings—our tendency to be self-centered and incapable of doing the right thing on a consistent basis—and thus he conceded the need for a kind of repentance that would overcome evil in one’s moral life. If there was one philosopher with whom each of the nineteenth-century theologians had to wrestle, it was Kant.11 Still another former Pietist, Johann Semler (1725–1791), used historical criticism to treat the Bible merely as an historical text which the church must acknowledge as such. In this regard he furthered the work begun by the radical German Deist, H.S. Reimarus (1694–1768), whose controversial writings were partly published first by Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781), another key figure in the German Enlightenment. Reimarus was the first to apply the historical-critical method to the canonical Gospels and to Jesus and thus he began the so-called “quest for the historical Jesus,” to use the phrase that Albert Schweitzer’s English translator had given to the Schweitzer’s classic work, Von Reimarus zu Wrede.12 Reimarus set in motion a way of investigating the Scriptures that would shake the foundations of all subsequent orthodox understandings of Jesus and the Scriptures. Every nineteenth-century theologian had to deal with the scholarly 11 Claude Welch makes this same point. See Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972, 1985), 1:47. 12 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. William Montgomery (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press in association with The Albert Schweitzer Institute, 1998). The German original was published in 1906.

16

Matthew L. Becker

results that were produced by the use of historical criticism on the Christian Bible and to wrestle with the growing assumption that truth could only stand on reason and history. Only the most conservative of nineteenth-century theologians still saw no real distinction between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith” or any significant problem with the gospels as historical sources for reconstructing “a life of Jesus.”

Forward to Luther Beyond the historical investigation of Jesus, the nineteenth century also witnessed a renewed interest in the thinking of Luther. This was partly the result of the tricentennial celebration of the German Lutheran Reformation (1817), which followed the wars of liberation and the Congress of Vienna (1815). At that time, Luther was hailed as a German folk hero, the key forerunner of German nationalism. On the other hand, Claus Harms (1778–1855) used Luther’s example as an opportunity to publish his own updated “95 Theses” in 1817, which attacked human reason as “the pope of our time.” Later in the century, other Lutherans would also appeal to the writings of Luther over against aspects of Orthodoxy, Pietism, and Rationalism. For example, Hofmann at Erlangen pitted Luther against Lutheran Orthodoxy, whereas other neo-Lutheran Erlangers (and some conservative Lutherans elsewhere) leveled Luther against Hofmann. That conflict thus marked the beginning of the modern “quest for the historical Luther,” a scholarly endeavor that was also propelled by the publication of the initial volumes in the critical edition of Luther’s works, the so-called Weimar Ausgabe (1883–-), and furthered in the twentieth century through the important work of Karl Holl, Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, Gerhard Ebeling, and others.

A Vista of Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theology While Lutheran Orthodoxy, Pietism, and Rationalism persisted beyond the eighteenth century, new movements emerged in the nineteenth that also raised questions about Lutheran identity. None of the Lutherans at that time could avoid the ground-breaking work of Schleiermacher, even when they fiercely opposed his theological method and dogmatic conclusions (as did most of the theologians presented here, from Hegel to Theodosius Harnack) or failed to fully acknowledge their debts to him (e. g., Hofmann). Even Harms admitted that he would occasionally sneak in to the Dreifaltigkeitkirche to hear the famous Berliner preach!

Editor’s Introduction

17

The Protestant Tübingen school of Ferdinand Baur (1792–1860), influenced by the ideas of Hegel, utilized the historical method to question conventional views about the New Testament canon and to provide a strictly historical reconstruction of Christian origins. Yet both Hegel and Baur would come under fierce criticism by more conservative Lutherans, such as Ernst Hengstenberg (1802–1869), who sought to defend seventeenth-century dogmatic forms and ahistorical “proof-texting” of the Bible. Hengstenberg’s approach was also adopted by others, such as C.F.W. Walther (1811–87), who uncritically treated the Bible as an “objective norm,” even in scientific matters, and who merely sought to protect the confessional and dogmatic heritage of Lutheran Orthodoxy over against perceived modern errors. Nevertheless, Walther, too, was capable of setting forth a creative understanding of Christian doctrine, as he did in his lectures on the proper distinction between law and gospel, which is perhaps the most important document to come out of nineteenth-century American Lutheranism. Like Walther, Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–83)—the only figure here who was born in the United States—opposed “the American Lutheran” movement of Samuel S. Schmucker (1799–1873), whose “American recension” of the Augsburg Confession departed from some of the basic teachings in Lutheran Orthodoxy (e. g., baptismal regeneration, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper). As editor of The Lutheran and The Missionary and as author of The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (1871), Krauth had a profound influence upon confessional American Lutheranism in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. In Denmark, Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) also attacked what he saw as the errors of rationalist clergy. He emphasized the necessity of a vibrant faith based on the living word of God, which is made effective by the Holy Spirit who acts through the church’s means of grace. For Grundtvig the “living word” is fundamentally an oral proclamation that is distinct from the written words in the Bible. At best the latter is the mere vehicle that can convey this “living word.” While Grundtvig’s position on the nature of the Bible was troubling to those Lutherans who firmly held to the seventeenth-century position on verbal inspiration, his theological understanding allowed him to move beyond the impasse between Lutheran Orthodoxy and Rationalism. A gifted hymn writer, Grundtvig brought about a great spiritual and cultural revival throughout his native land, despite the conservative criticism that was later leveled against him and his followers. Back in German-speaking territory, Johann T. Beck (1804–78) developed his own unique position vis-à-vis Rationalism and Lutheran Orthodoxy. Indeed, he leveled criticism against both those to his “left” and those to his “right” and argued that the Bible is the sole objective basis for Christian doctrine. All true Christian knowledge, he held, is grounded in the perfect knowledge revealed in

18

Matthew L. Becker

Holy Scripture, which can only be received through “spiritual” exegesis. Beck’s powerful rhetoric swayed large numbers of students to his brand of “biblical realism.” Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872), pastor in Neuendettelsau, organized influential missionary activity on three continents. He coupled a strong sense of “church” with a commitment to “the whole person” and thus supported deaconesses and social ministry. His views on “church and ministry,” one of the principal areas of doctrinal disagreement among nineteenth-century Lutherans, were quite influential, both at home and abroad. In contrast to Hengstenberg’s repristinationist theology, scholars at Erlangen (e. g., Gottfried Thomasius [1802–75], Adolf von Harless [1806–79], Johannes von Hofmann [1810–77]), despite their individual differences from each other, developed distinctive forms of theology that were based on the experience of baptismal regeneration, the certainty of personal faith, a critical appropriation of the Lutheran Confessions, and an organic-historical understanding of the Bible and the church. The most impressive “Erlanger” was Hofmann, who creatively restated Trinitarian theology in terms of salvation history even as he rejected traditional understandings of vicarious satisfaction in favor of a kenotic Christology—a move that created conflict between himself and most other Lutheran theologians at the time (e. g., Theodosius Harnack [1817–89]). Like Hofmann, Isaak Dorner (1809–1884), too, was significantly influenced by Schleiermacher and thus developed a form of “mediating theology” that sought to reconcile Christian doctrine and modern forms of thought. Toward that end, he did not want to exclude natural theology from a scholarly understanding of the Christian faith, but hoped that the latter would give due consideration to divine revelation in both nature and history. As a student of Baur, Dorner soon saw Christology as the central problem for modern theology. His greatest work, the four-volume History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (2d ed., 1846–56), is a classic example of wrestling with this problem through a combination of careful, critical scholarship, creative theological reflection, and a deep concern for the church and its abiding faith. This kind of mediating theology underwent further development in the thought of Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), another student of Baur’s and the most important Protestant theologian in the final third of the century. Ritschl utilized Kant’s critical philosophy to repudiate all metaphysics and pietistic experience and emphasized the ethical and communal character of the Christian church. His distinctive form of “liberal” theology sought to hold together a living faith in Christ, a scholarly, critical understanding of the Bible, and a moral vision of the kingdom of God. Through this synthesis he hoped to make Christianity intelligible and persuasive to modern, cultured Europeans. This form of Protestant theology was later furthered by Ritschl’s most significant students, Wilhelm

Editor’s Introduction

19

Herrmann (1846–1922), Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), and, in America, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918). Another mediating theologian from this period, Martin Kähler (1835–1912), leveled strong criticism against any who tried to develop a “life of Jesus” on the basis of the Gospels and argued that faith is not based on the results of historical-critical research but on the living voice of the gospel through contemporary preaching in the church. Kähler’s theology would have a lasting impact on several key theologians in the next century, particularly Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann. In contrast to Ritschl, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) rejected all attempts to mediate between Christ and culture. He differentiated faith and reason, attacked the Danish Church, and prepared the way for the dialectical theology of Karl Barth (1886–1968). As a result of the crisis that the First World War created for modern European culture and civilization, many post-war individuals identified with Kierkegaard’s protest against modernity and his attack on cultural Christendom. His meditations on sin, evil, suffering, and redemption found greater acceptance in that later age than they did in his own. The Great War also stimulated individuals like Nathan Söderblom (1866– 1931) to work toward religious unity, especially among Christian denominations. He is to be particularly singled out for his ecumenism and his scholarly efforts to understand the nature of the world’s religions. In his office as the Archbishop of Uppsala he continually stressed that the call of Christ is a call to be responsible in and for the world and to work for reconciliation and peace among the nations. Within even a large volume like this, it has not been possible to examine every important Lutheran theologian from the nineteenth century. Those who are familiar with Lutheranism in this period will quickly spot the lacunae: e. g., no chapters on August Tholuck (1799–1877), Richard Rothe (1799–1867), Ernst Hengstenberg, Johann H. Wichern (1808–81), Isaak Dorner, Wilhelm Herrmann, and many others. Instead of seeking a comprehensive, and necessarily cursory, survey of numerous Lutheran theologians, the goal has been to select several exemplary figures. It has also not been possible to deal at any length with the nonintellectual, socio-political factors that conditioned the course of Lutheran theology in this period. While theology never occurs in a vacuum, the focus here has been on the central ideas of these Lutheran thinkers.

Key Issues What issues relevant for contemporary theologians surface from an examination of these specific nineteenth-century Lutheran theologians? Were there certain basic concerns that attracted the interests of these thinkers that might still be of importance today? It seems to me that there are three such matters.

20

Matthew L. Becker

First, as already noted, the influence of Kant assured that issues of epistemology—regarding the limits of reason and the nature of rationality—would be central to the task of theology in the century after his death. His “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy is evident in most of the individuals treated here. Reactions to his critique of rational theology varied greatly, as can be seen just by comparing the views of Schleiermacher, who grounded faith in the feeling of absolute dependence on God, and Hegel, who sought to overcome Kant by means of reflection on religious symbols in service to philosophical truth. Beyond these classic alternatives to Kant, there were those, like Hofmann, who appealed to the immediacy of their faith in Christ, which was itself grounded in the experience of baptismal rebirth and renewed through the living voice of the gospel. More conservative Lutherans, who rejected Kant’s views on individual autonomy, nevertheless welcomed his attack on Wolffian rationalism and classical metaphysics as an aid in their own defense of the divine authority of the Bible. Despite the rise of historical criticism and advances in the natural sciences, which further eroded the seventeenth-century Protestant notion of biblical inerrancy, many continued to appeal to the Bible as an absolute authority on all matters which it treats. At the other end of the theological spectrum and later in the century, Ritschlianism made fruitful use of Kant’s critique of metaphysics and his articulation of a moral theology. “Back to Kant!” was then the motto for rethinking the content of Protestant theology. The problems posed by his philosophy are still with us today. Second, the question of the nature of religious truth was further complicated by the rise of historical-critical study of the Bible, which created fundamental problems for understanding both the nature of biblical authority and the person of Jesus. This two-fold issue is usually called “the problem of faith and history,” which was given classic expression by Lessing, who differentiated between “the accidental truths of history” and “the necessary truths of reason” and who leveled strong criticism against those who sought false assurances for their faith when menaced by historical criticism. On the one hand, the problem arises from doubts about the reliability of the Scriptures to provide accurate historical knowledge of Jesus as a figure of history. On the other hand, the problem arises from doubts about how the historical figure of Jesus could be an object of contemporary faith. Each of the theologians examined in this book wrestled with this problem and struggled to affirm the authority of the Scriptures and the full humanity of Jesus, but they did so in quite different ways and often for different ends, e. g., Schleiermacher’s Christocentric principle is quite different from Hegel’s philosophical explanation of the incarnation, just as Hofmann’s kenotic Christology is different from Walther’s Orthodox Christology and from Kierkegaard’s reflections on the paradox of the God-man and the absolute qualitative difference between time and eternity. The publication of the first edition of

Editor’s Introduction

21

Strauss’ Leben Jesu (1835) only intensified efforts to articulate the proper basis for faith in Christ. While Kähler provided perhaps the strongest reminder that the Gospels are not really historical sources that will give us a “life” of Jesus, most of the other theologians in this book also acknowledged that Christian faith does not finally depend on the vagaries of historical scholarship. The witness of the Scriptures is to the living, risen Christ, who encounters us through the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments. Finally, each of the theologians offered a theological anthropology that affirmed the classic Lutheran Orthodox teaching that human beings are creatures of God and, at the same time, fallen creatures who daily sin and are thus in need of divine forgiveness and salvation. Over against rationalist confidence in human capabilities, which were further supported by achievements in the sciences and by technological advances in an age of industry, the theologians surveyed here emphasized human limitations and weaknesses and stressed that human beings are far more complicated than mere “thinking beings” or “autonomous individuals.” Purely humanistic and atheistic efforts to reinterpret human beings and their nature were met with theological skepticism. At stake for these Lutherans was the revelation of human beings as sinners under the divine law and the revelation of the gospel as the promise of divine pardon. The word of the gospel that conveys grace to troubled sinners not only frees one from one’s sinful past, but it frees one to enjoy and be thankful for the gifts that God gives in the present, and to serve others in need.

Conclusion A case can be made that we are still living in the “modern” world that was inaugurated in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. If that is so, then a case can also be made that we today ought to pay attention to thinkers who wrestled with theological problems at the dawn of this modern age. Their reflections marked a watershed in the history of Christian thought that continues to have an influence upon contemporary thinking. Their responses to the challenges and crises of “modernity” are worthy of continued exploration, if only to avoid repeating their mistakes or following roads that lead to dead ends. Then again, at the very least, we ought to acknowledge that contemporary Lutheran theology would not be where it is today—for good or ill—without the contributions and influence of the theologians examined here. This, I believe, is a sufficient reason for our engaging them even today.

22

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements Four individuals are to be recognized for their commitment to this project: Virgil F. Thompson and Paul Rorem of Lutheran Quarterly for their editorial skills in working through several of the essays in their early stages; Mark Mattes, who helped to conceive the project as a whole and who offered me encouragement along the way; and Jörg Persch, who oversaw the project as its chief editor at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Christine Helmer

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

Contemporary Lutheran estimation of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher’s thought can be summarized by what American Lutheran theologian George A. Lindbeck calls “experiential-expressivism.”1 Schleiermacher, according to the argument, sees religious experience as a pre-linguistic phenomenon. Language later “expresses” the primary experience, thereby linguistically determining the generic experience at a secondary level. Experience is primary; Christian discourse is only accidentally related to experience. In other words, experience is pitted in opposition to Scripture. The problem with Schleiermacher is not new. Since the early twentieth century, Schleiermacher has been singled out for special attention. In the wake of World War I, theologians in Germany and Switzerland sought to articulate a theology that could counter the cultural-religious alliance with politics that fed Germany’s nationalism. Emil Brunner, pastor and then later professor of theology, published a scathing criticism of Schleiermacher in 1924 (a second edition followed in 1928), articulating the growing concern among theologians that the “liberal” theology of their predecessors had led to the catastrophic casualties in the trenches of the Great War.2 Schleiermacher emerged in Brunner’s book as representative of what had gone wrong: a “nature” mysticism connected to a philosophy of identity that stood behind religion’s conflation with politics. While Brunner’s view contains serious interpretative errors—Schleiermacher’s mysticism has to do with the experience of the Christus praesens in the church and his philosophy is better aligned with a Kantian critical epistemology than a philosophy of identity—the suspicion remains in Lutheran circles that Schleiermacher

1 See George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Theology and Religion in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1984), 21. Lindbeck’s book was re-issued in 2009 in a 25th Anniversary Edition. 2 Emil Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort: Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: J.C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1928).

24

Christine Helmer

advocates the mixing of God in human consciousness.3 Lutherans committed to the externality of God’s word are anxious with Schleiermacher’s interiority of consciousness. At stake is the gospel and its communication, or God’s external word in Scripture. In this essay I focus on Schleiermacher’s concept of the “feeling of absolute dependence” in order to clarify the basic misunderstanding concerning an alleged opposition between experience and word. I will use the phrase to access Schleiermacher’s thinking about Christian religious experience and how he connects the reality of Christ to the language of proclamation and doctrine. Hence a clarification of the meaning of the feeling of absolute dependence will show why Schleiermacher required a concept of religion in order to work out his theology, and how theology can account for the experience of Christ in necessary relation to Scripture, preaching, and doctrine. The result will, I hope, inspire Lutherans to appropriate Schleiermacher as a conversation partner, one who challenges and inspires dynamic and constructive theological thinking. In the first part of the essay I consider the description of religion that first introduced Schleiermacher as a major thinker on the world’s stage. In 1799, between February and April, Schleiermacher wrote a set of five speeches: On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Religion is a necessary dimension of human existence, Schleiermacher asserts, and in order properly to make it the object of derision, one should understand what the term means. I frame Schleiermacher’s contribution to the concept of religious feeling in the Moravian context of his family and education. Pietism is the historical key to understanding Schleiermacher’s sense for religious experience. In the second part, I clarify the relation between the feeling of absolute dependence that Schleiermacher outlines in the “Introduction” to his theological system, The Christian Faith, and its Christological determination. In the process I clarify the term of “immediate self-consciousness,” and show how Schleiermacher’s theory of religious consciousness is intimately related to his understanding that the redemption Jesus gives to believers is communicated through the preaching of the gospel. I connect Schleiermacher’s understanding of theology to his participation in the founding of the University of Berlin in 1810. It is significant for the history of modern theology that he assigns to theology a distinctive place among the other sciences (Wissenschaften) in the research university. 3 See for example my analysis of two contemporary Lutheran theologians, Oswald Bayer and George Lindbeck, that focuses on their reading of Schleiermacher in the disjunctive terms of either external word or human experience: “Transformations of Luther’s Theology in View of Schleiermacher,” in Transformations in Luther’s Theology: Historical and Contemporary Reflections, ed. Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm, Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte, vol. 32 (Leipzig: EVA-Leipzig, 2011), 104–121.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

25

This is a good time in the trajectory of Schleiermacher scholarship to delve into his thought. Since 1989—the year in which the Berlin wall fell—a Schleiermacher “renaissance” has been taking place. His works are being critically edited in a complete edition, the Kritische Gesamtausgabe, published by de Gruyter in Berlin.4 With new texts made public and older texts now available in a critical edition, scholars over the past three decades have carefully studied the basic concepts of Schleiermacher’s thought, analyzing his distinctive vocabulary and reading his works against a complicated background of post-Kantian, Romantic, and German Idealist thought. Careful work has clarified misconceptions that have accrued since Brunner’s polemical text, and has demonstrated the new directions of Schleiermacher’s thinking in the many areas of his expertise. Interpreters appreciate the interconnections between various disciplines, for example his psychology, his “dialectic” or philosophy, and religion. Furthermore, scholars are beginning to connect Schleiermacher’s contributions to broader discussions in religion, theology, and philosophy, and are thus translating Schleiermacher’s difficult language into more accessible terms.5 Finding out what Schleiermacher is up to has never been easier!

The Young Schleiermacher Friedrich Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768, in Breslau, a town in Prussia. Crucial to the political dimension of his story is the geographical context. Schleiermacher spent most of his life in Prussia, one of the two most powerful of the roughly 350 German states in existence at that time. Friedrich Wilhelm had consolidated Prussia’s territory between 1640 and 1688. Friedrich II or the Great continued to align military power with the landed aristocracy. He ruled from 1740 to 1786 and it is after him that the theologian Schleiermacher was named. Schleiermacher was born into a family of Reformed pastors. His mother, Elisabeth Maria Katharina Stubenrauch, was the daughter of a Reformed minister and elder sister to Samuel Ernst Timotheus Stubenrauch, who was instrumental in facilitating Friedrich’s studies in Halle and his eventual pastoral career. Gottlieb Schleiermacher, Friedrich’s father, was a second-generation Reformed minister and a military chaplain. He experienced a religious transformation in 1778 when camped with the Prussian army in Pless, near the Moravian colony of 4 The standard abbreviation for this work, used hereafter, is KGA. 5 In addition to Theodore Vial’s excellent introduction, Schleiermacher (London: T&T Clark, 2013), see the following two accessible works: Catherine L. Kelsey, Thinking About Christ with Schleiermacher (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003); and Terrence Tice, Schleiermacher, Abingdon Pillars of Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006).

26

Christine Helmer

Gnadenfrei. This awakening would profoundly shape Friedrich’s piety and life. From then on, Friedrich’s parents infused their household with Moravian Pietism. They educated their three children, Charlotte, Friedrich, and Carl, at home. When Friedrich was fourteen, he went to a Moravian boarding school in Niesky and two years later he entered the seminary at Barby, where he illicitly read Kant and Goethe. A profound crisis of faith at the age of eighteen ensued that would have significant consequences for Friedrich’s intellectual and vocational path. The crisis is documented in an exchange of letters with his father. In a letter dated to January 21, 1787, son Friedrich writes: Faith is the regalia of the Godhead, you say. Alas! Dearest father, if you believe that without this faith no one can attain to salvation in the next world, nor to tranquility in this—and such, I know, is your belief—oh! then pray to God to grant it to me, for to me it is now lost. I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was the true, eternal God; I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement.6

Gottlieb Schleiermacher expressed his shock, writing that his son “has crucified Christ, disturbed his late mother’s rest, and made his stepmother weep … I must, for you no longer worship the God of your father, no longer kneel at the same altar with him.”7 The family drama was, however, tempered by Friedrich’s request for permission to explore further intellectual possibilities at the University of Halle, the Prussian university infused with Enlightenment commitments. Friedrich’s father respected the wish and concluded his letter with a gesture of peace. “I can add no more except the assurance that with sorrowing and heavy heart, I remain your deeply compassionate and loving father.”8 Thus Friedrich embarked on an intellectual journey that would permeate his piety with Enlightenment philosophy. He lived for two years with his uncle Stubenrauch in Halle, and then accompanied his uncle to a pastorate in Drossen, finally passing his first theological exams in April or May of 1790 in Berlin (with a grade of “passable” in dogmatics!). Once Friedrich passed his second theological exams in February 1794, he began a pastoral career—his first post as assistant pastor in Landsberg—that preoccupied him for the rest of his life. Of note is that throughout these early years of travels, Friedrich wrote sketches in philosophical ethics and engaged the thought of Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Spinoza. These writings contain the seeds of ideas Schleiermacher would develop throughout his career as a professor. His concerns in ethics were the ideas of the highest good

6 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Schleiermacher as Unfolded in His Autobiography and Letters, 2 vols., trans. Frederica Rowan (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1860), 46–47. 7 Cited in Vial, Schleiermacher, 7. 8 Vial, Schleiermacher, 7.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

27

and freedom, as well as a theory of individuality that could ground ethics in contrast to Kant’s universal moral law. Schleiermacher’s appointment in 1796 (until 1802) as chaplain in Berlin’s Charité hospital meant that he came into contact with a third intellectual movement that would, in addition to Pietism and the Enlightenment, have a transformative effect on his thinking about religion. He became associated with the Romantics, a circle of poets and writers whose conversation was characterized by “free sociality,” and who created a particular rhetoric in order to articulate the fundamental human longing for, but never access to, the “infinite.” The designation “Romantic” comes from the German for novel, Roman, in particular, the Bildungsroman, or stories of individual maturation through struggle, that Goethe had introduced to the literary world. As a welcome guest in the Berlin salons, Schleiermacher became friends with Henriette Herz, the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, and the Romantic poet, Friedrich Schlegel, with whom he would embark on a project of translating Plato into German, a project that Schleiermacher finished himself. It was at 10 a.m. on his birthday in 1797 that Schlegel arrived with a toast: “29 years old and nothing yet accomplished! … I want something written this year.”9 The two Friedrichs became roommates the following month and Schleiermacher rose to the challenge. In three months of early 1799 he wrote what is largely considered to be the most important defense of religion of the past two hundred years: On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. The aim of the Speeches, as the text is familiarly called, is to clarify an understanding of religion that Schleiermacher’s Romantic interlocutors have not yet considered. They have, according to Schleiermacher, a severely limited concept of religion in mind to ridicule. Schleiermacher thus opens a way to conceive of religion beyond the two options available in his day. He articulates the memorable phrase: “Praxis is an art, speculation is a science, religion is the sensibility and taste for the infinite.”10 With this new definition of religion, Schleiermacher shows that the object of derision is, in fact, not religion, but a flawed identification of religion with both rational systems of thought and the moral law. Between Hegel and Kant, between rationalism and morality, religion is actually something quite different: it is an experience. Schleiermacher thus embarks on the intellectual task of clarifying a concept, while simultaneously nudging his readers to see the truth of the concept for themselves. He orchestrates the speeches as a series of steps in experiencing and 9 Cited in Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 88. 10 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1st edition), ed. and trans. Richard Crouter, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23.

28

Christine Helmer

realizing that religion is, precisely, an experience of the infinite. Once his interlocutors have experienced religion for themselves, they will have acquired both a true concept of religion and have intimate acquaintance with a phenomenon that is prior to both intellectual reasoning and morality. Religion will be appreciated as constitutive to human existence. Schleiermacher will later work out this concept as the feeling of absolute dependence. At this early Romantic stage, however, he communicates his conviction that a living religion has distinct and unique qualities, coaxing his hearers to “see,” so that they might believe! One significant term in Schleiermacher’s definition of religion is the objective dimension: the “infinite.” On this point Schleiermacher is frequently misunderstood. Is not the “infinite” already part of subjective consciousness? Is God not mystically merged with the human soul? These criticisms from Lutherans anxious to maintain the externality of the word of God at all costs miss the important objective claim in Schleiermacher’s idea of the infinite. First, Schleiermacher in contrast to his German Idealist colleague, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, was a metaphysical realist. Schleiermacher is committed to a worldview in which objects in the world exist apart from our perceptions of them. Anything that is experienced presupposes a causal reference as the source of the experience. While the infinite cannot be experienced as an object in the world— Schleiermacher shares this idea with Kant—the infinite exists independently of human perception. When it is experienced, the experience is passive reception. What is experienced? The “infinite,” Schleiermacher in his German text uses the Latin Universum, or universe. Lutherans might again be anxious about this heterodox designation for God. While Schleiermacher later, in his theological works, uses the Christian theological terminology of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, at this early Romantic stage, Schleiermacher expresses his ideas in Romantic rhetoric. The term “infinite” means the totality of the world and all objects in it, or the universe as a whole, more than what is on earth, the totality of all there is. The infinite is perceived as a totality. As a Romantic, Schleiermacher insists that human longing is directed towards the infinite: Religion “wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe’s own manifestations and actions …”11 Yet Schleiermacher “solves” the Romantic inability to reach the infinite by insisting that the infinite is the subject of its manifestations. The infinite chooses from an infinite array of possible forms to become manifest in particular forms to individuals. The infinite has “its imprint and its manifestation, in humanity no less than in all other individual and finite forms.”12 Religious experience is of the infinite as it reveals itself in the finite.

11 Schleiermacher, On Religion, 22. 12 Schleiermacher, On Religion, 23.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

29

Schleiermacher also takes into account the human subjective dimension. Although the human is the passive recipient of the infinite’s revelation, the individual is able to actually have this experience by appreciating it in subjectivity. Lutherans might again react to the hint of interiority that plagues an accurate interpretation of what Schleiermacher means by the subjective dimension to religious experience. Schleiermacher’s interest is in describing the human features of an experience of reality that includes a dimension of transformation. When humans are touched by God, they are moved in distinctive and surprising ways. Two terms are part of the technical vocabulary of the subjective dimension: intuition (Anschauung) and feeling (Gefühl). The capacities that “receive” the experience in the subject are actually two aspects of the one subjective side of experience. When the infinite is experienced, “every intuition is, by its very nature, connected with a feeling.”13 Both are dimensions within the perceiving subject, activated and set into motion when an objective reality reveals itself to the subject. The two terms have, however, distinct functions within the subject. Intuition is a term stemming from Kant’s transcendental analysis of experience as he restricts it to objects of sense perception. Schleiermacher uses the term as the subjective aspect of the referential capacity of the experience. Every experience that comes from an external source, so to speak, is registered as such—as referring to an external cause, within the subjective capacity of intuition. While intuition refers the relatively internal phenomenon to an external cause, the term “feeling” is used to denote solely the internal sentiment of the perceiving subject. Feeling, while referring to moods and affects at various levels of self-consciousness, means in Schleiermacher’s religious semantics a subjective state that registers an internal state in an experience. Intuition and feeling are stimulated together in the event of a revelation of the infinite, while the subjective dimension of the experience registers internally both a referent to an external cause (intuition) and an internal state of feeling. The significant point in Schleiermacher’s description of religious experience is to capture religion as an experience with key characteristics. It is, in effect, an awareness of the finite as part of a totality that transcends individual and world. This awareness is distinctive to the individual because it is dependent on the infinite’s choice to reveal itself to the individual in this particular way. The intuition and feeling that are generated in the experience do not transpire with the imposition of any categories of the understanding. Schleiermacher uses the vocabulary pair of intuition and feeling in order to underline his point concerning the non-rational and non-linguistic dimension to religious experience. 13 Schleiermacher, On Religion, 29.

30

Christine Helmer

Even the category “God” is avoided as any concrete determination of the object of revelation because it would subsume religion under a rational (either theoretical or practical) operation. Religion is a distinct sort of experience. What can we expect to experience? The movement of the second speech represents Schleiermacher’s long index finger, pointing to possible candidates in nature and history. He urges his listeners to look that they might also taste and see (Ps 34:8). Schleiermacher rests on one evocative scene: It is as fleeting and transparent as the first scent with which the dew gently caresses the waking flowers, as modest and delicate as a maiden’s kiss, as holy and fruitful as a nuptial embrace; indeed, not like these, but is itself all of these. A manifestation, an event develops quickly and magically into an image of the universe. Even as the beloved and ever-sought-for-form fashions itself, my soul flees toward it; I embrace it, not as a shadow, but as the holy essence itself. I lie on the bosom of the infinite world.14

The erotic rhetoric, resonating with the Christian mystical tradition of nuptial “happy exchange,” reveals Schleiermacher’s young passion in the experience of intimate love. The focus, however, is on seeing the experience as it is experienced, not on its subsequent articulation or even explanation. It is an experience that precedes the rational act of expression. It is fleeting, and when captured by linguistic articulation, it is fixed into two constituent parts: intuition and feeling. Language is inevitable, as Schleiermacher will later make clear in The Christian Faith. Language is a necessary part of culture and religion. When one is born into a particular community, language is already there, constructing the concepts and conceptually shaping possible experiences in culturally particular ways. Yet the experience of love’s unity precedes description and explanation. Love between two people, and eventually love for humanity as a whole is the note on which the second speech ends. In 1802 Schleiermacher returned to Gnadenfrei. He reminisced about the maturation he had undergone since he had first encountered the Moravians at age nine. A letter written to his publisher Georg Reimer,15 dated to April 30, summarizes his self-understanding: Here it was for the first time I awoke to the consciousness of the relations of man to a higher world … Here it was that that mystic tendency developed itself, which has been of so much importance to me, and has supported and carried me through all the storms of skepticism. Then it was only germinating, now it has attained its full development …

14 Schleiermacher, On Religion, 32 (italics in published translation). 15 This publisher is now the present-day Walter de Gruyter in Berlin, responsible for publishing the critical edition of Schleiermacher’s works.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

31

And I may say, that after all that I have passed through, I have become a Herrnhuter again, only of a higher order.16

After a crisis of faith, he had begun a process of personal discovery, academic education, and vocational training, all of which contributed to his developing identity as a theologian who speaks about religion out of “the inner, irresistible necessity of my nature; it is a divine calling.”17 Some might call this an existential leap into authenticity, others a maturation. Yet the striking autobiographical passage suggests that the mystic piety of the Moravians, a piety devoted to Jesus, remained constant throughout. What had changed were the intellectual expressions of that piety. He had learned the Enlightenment categories of subjectivity, Kant’s critical philosophy, and the Romantic longing for the infinite, and appropriated these languages in order to articulate in more truthful and accurate ways what he had experienced deep down as the particular way in which the infinite had revealed itself to him and to Christianity as a whole: the person of Jesus Christ. The early Schleiermacher mirrors in some ways Luther’s own dramatic Reformation breakthrough. In his way he opens what both theologians saw as the main point about religion: an encounter and relationship with the living God. The encounter had been precipitated by the formation in the older language and categories of religion. The crisis of faith had been prepared by anxiety, intellectual frustration, and experiential implausibility that the God of ancestral faith did not satisfy the quest for the gracious God. Yet for both Luther and Schleiermacher, the long search for religious truth was moved by an awareness that consolation could be found, precisely, in the religion that they had outgrown. “Religion helped me,” Schleiermacher tells the cultured despisers, “when I began to examine the ancestral faith and to purify my heart of the rubble of primitive times. It remained with me when God and immortality disappeared before my doubting eyes.”18 God and immortality would return. Both Luther and Schleiermacher’s body of work attest to the theological power of their new found certainty (although Schleiermacher would temper his explication of the concept of immortality with critical reason!). In the above section I have focused primarily on the early Schleiermacher in order to access the expression of religion that would inform his later theological work. It is to the later Schleiermacher of the Berlin years that I now turn, in order to convey aspects of his theology of interest to Lutherans: ideas about the experience of Christ in the Christian community.

16 Schleiermacher, The Life of Schleiermacher, 283. 17 Schleiermacher, Speeches, 5. 18 Schleiermacher, Speeches, 8.

32

Christine Helmer

The Later Schleiermacher of the Berlin Years The second half of Schleiermacher’s life can be called the “Berlin years.” Although he had spent time in Berlin as a young Romantic, Schleiermacher’s move to Berlin from Halle on December 31, 1807, was permanent. He would work there as pastor and professor until his untimely death of pneumonia on February 12, 1834. In this section I contextualize Schleiermacher’s theological focus on the “feeling of absolute dependence” in the context of his Berlin years. What we see in the context of university reform is Schleiermacher’s new vision for theology as an academic discipline, for which he carries the honorable title, “father of modern theology.” Schleiermacher’s hospital chaplaincy in Berlin had ended abruptly. He was removed to a post as court chaplain in a north Prussian coastal town, Stolp, because of a love affair with Eleonore von Grunow, wife of a Lutheran minister (and muse of his Soliloquies, published in 1800). There, Schleiermacher drowned his sorrows by writing a lengthy book on ethics, translating Plato into German, and publishing a 200-page text in 1804 that would catch the king’s attention: Two Provisional Reports Concerning the Condition of the Protestant Church in Relation to the Protestant State.19 The work addressed the split between Lutherans and Reformed, and proposed a liturgy that would facilitate a joint communion. The Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III (reigned 1797–1840), too, was concerned about the Protestant rift. He was from the Reformed wing of the Hohenzollern dynasty—the Swabian branch was Lutheran—and he wanted to take communion with his Lutheran wife, Queen Louise. Although Reformed, the king ruled over a population in the territory of Brandenburg that was predominantly Lutheran. Thus Schleiermacher’s early ecumenical work favorably predisposed him to the king, who decided that Prussia needed the services of this young Reformed pastor and theologian. The king first appointed Schleiermacher to a teaching and pastoral post in the Lutheran university of Halle. When Napoleon conquered Prussia in 1806, he shut down the University. Schleiermacher left for Berlin, and would soon be appointed the king’s court chaplain, a post that involved partnering with the Lutheran minister at Trinity Church (Dreifaltigkeitskirche) in Berlin, a large and ecumenical Lutheran-Reformed congregation founded by Wilhelm’s grandfather. For the rest of his life, Schleiermacher preached weekly at the church. He was so 19 I follow Brent Sockness’s translation of the German title, “Zwei unvorgreifliche Gutachten in Sachen des protestantischen Kirchenwesens zunächst in Beziehung auf den Preußischen Staat,” in Schriften aus der Stolper Zeit (1802–1804), ed. Eilert Herms, Günter Meckenstock, and Michael Pietsch, KGA I/4 (2002): in Brent W. Sockness, “The Forgotten Moralist: Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Science of Spirit,” Harvard Theological Review 96, no. 3 (2003): 319.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

33

famous as a preacher that on his death, 20,000 people lined the streets of Berlin to see his coffin pass. The first years in Berlin proved to be exciting. Schleiermacher’s appointment at Trinity Church officially began on June 11, 1809. A few weeks earlier, on May 18, 1809, he married Henriette von Willich, the widow he had consoled after the death of her husband in 1807. In 1808 Schleiermacher published an essay, Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense with an Appendix Regarding a University Soon to Be Established. The essay caught the eye of Wilhelm von Humboldt, the linguist and philosopher who was also responsible for founding the new flagship university in Prussia, the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin.20 This text articulated the organizational vision for the sciences, die Wissenschaften, and the pursuit of knowledge in the research university. Schleiermacher, in addition to beginning to teach theology in 1808, was drafted by Humboldt to help translate vision into institution. Schleiermacher was appointed the first dean of the theological faculty after its official opening in 1810, and eventually served as university rector from 1815 to 1816. In addition to pastoral and professorial responsibilities, Schleiermacher also participated in political affairs of the day and contributed lectures as a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. The Berlin years represent a time of extraordinary work output in the form of lectures, publications, sermons, staggering indeed even for someone who slept only four hours a night. In order to gain an understanding of what Schleiermacher means when he calls theology a “positive science,” we need to consider his proposal for knowledge that facilitated the organization of the University of Berlin. Schleiermacher conceived the unity of the distinct disciplines in the university, the “universe” of sciences (Wissenschaften), as the idea of knowledge. This is a speculative idea that Schleiermacher divided into two distinct areas: ethics as the aspect of knowledge having to do with the principles of how humans act in culture and history, and physics, having to do with the realm of nature.21 These two fundamental areas of study would represent all of reality from two perspectives non-reducible to each other. The academic pursuit of knowledge requires the demarcation of disciplines that carves out an aspect of reality to study; truth has to do with the 20 “Gelegentliche Gedanken Über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn. Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu errichtende,” in Friedrich Schleiermacher, Universitätsschriften; Herakleitos; Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, ed. Dirk Schmid (KGA I/6, 1998). 21 Brent W. Sockness beautifully defines ethics in “The Forgotten Moralist,” 347: “As the speculative ‘science of the principles of history,’ ethics investigates and develops the most basic concepts necessary for understanding and orienting praxis in the distinctively human world —the domain of culture and history constituted by the activities of the human spirit. On this expansive view of ethics, moral philosophy is more than a normative theory of human action. It is also a foundational science supplying the rest of the human sciences with their enabling principles.”

34

Christine Helmer

relation between thought and being. Schleiermacher further structured ethics and physics into distinct “real sciences,” meaning that these disciplines would pursue knowledge about finite reality. A theoretical and an empirical component structured each of the real sciences. The task of another set of tools, the technical and critical disciplines—notably dialectic and hermeneutics—was to connect theory with empirical research, and data with corresponding theory. Theology, too, was a science, specifically a positive science.22 Along with two other positive sciences, namely, jurisprudence and medicine, theology was a particular type of knowledge that had to do with an institution existing outside of the university. Positive meant having a function in the church, government in the case of law, and hospitals in the case of medicine. Schleiermacher’s legacy for theology has to do with envisioning the organization of theology from the goal of serving church leaders to improve the church’s practical tasks of preaching and caring for souls. In order to be able to know the situation of the contemporary church that is in need of improvement, one must know the church’s past that has shaped its present. Biblical exegesis and church history are the two historical disciplines that produce knowledge about the church’s past in order to work out knowledge of the contemporary church, both its doctrines and its morals, the tasks of dogmatic theology and Christian ethics. Informing the entire historical conception of theology is the discipline of philosophical theology. Schleiermacher thought that history required specific concepts that could facilitate the study of history in the first place. Hence philosophical theology had its task to propose concepts relevant for Christianity, such as revelation and canon, in order for the historical task to acquire conceptual precision. Finally practical theology served as theoretical discipline for conceiving theories for church improvement that could then be applied in concrete ministerial situations by pastors, or in administrative situations by church leaders.23 This five-part division of theological education into philosophical theology, biblical studies, history of Christianity, systematic theology, and practical theology is Schleiermacher’s legacy that exists today. Schleiermacher was committed to an educated clergy. It is in the context of explaining the function of the two sites for theological education, the university and the church, that he articulates the famous comment: The individual who is perfectly attuned equally to both an ecclesial interest and a scientific spirit is a 22 This paragraph is a summary of the basic divisions that Schleiermacher assigns to the theological task in his Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (1811/1830), trans. Terrence N. Tice (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). To be cited as BO. 23 Schleiermacher originally proposed a model of theological education that assigned practical theology to distinct seminaries independent of the university. See Johannes Wischmeyer, “Friedrich Schleiermacher: Son apport théoretique et pratique à la foundation de l’Université de Berlin (1805–1813),” Revue D’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 91, no. 1 (2011): 39.

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

35

“prince of the church.”24 Yet in reality a theologian tends to emphasize one of the two poles, whether by personal affinity or by ecclesial necessity, while keeping the other pole in view. Schleiermacher was also committed to a professoriate in which each professor would have at least two sub-fields of theology as areas of specialization.25 By his own specializations in New Testament and dogmatic theology, Schleiermacher modeled his vision that theologians should also have a view of the whole field of study. Theological formation includes the requirement to “think through” the subject matter for oneself, and this thinking through requires active appropriation and integration of different areas into theological knowledge. What is the task of theology? To find the “essence of Christianity.” Essence is a term Schleiermacher uses in order to point to the living power of Christianity that informs and shapes and is manifest in every historical moment of Christian history. The term connotes a metaphysical power (Kraft) that is manifest temporally in its diverse appearances (Erscheinungen). The theological task is at once an ecclesial appreciation for this living quality that permeates the Christian tradition. And it is the academic inquiry into the historical permutations of Christianity from Bible through church history to contemporary church as well as philosophical construction of key concepts that are pertinent to studying history. Both empirical and “speculative” projects occur in relation to each other: the historical yields information about the speculative idea, while ideas are conceived in order to be applied to the historical material. Furthermore, the task includes a critical dimension. The contemporary church situation is evaluated by applying the speculative idea of the essence of Christianity in order to diagnose how the church can better manifest the essence. Theology has the flourishing of the church in view. While the “essence of Christianity” is the task of theology, the term also conveys what Schleiermacher understands to be the key component of religious experience. Schleiermacher introduces his concept of religion in the “Introduction” to his Christian Faith. The introduction, which comprises §§ 1–31, is a clarification of key terms “borrowed” from other non-theological disciplines that help focus the distinctiveness of Christianity in relation to the realm of ethics or human agency. This clarification is often confused with the theological section of The Christian Faith that Schleiermacher does not begin until § 32. The introduction has also been misunderstood as a non-theological theoretical foundation for theology. The perceived threat is the tainting of the distinctive truth of Christian proclamation with alien idioms. This criticism is easily addressed when one surveys the architectonic of the introduction in relation to the 24 BO § 9 (p. 5). 25 See Wischmeyer, “Schleiermacher,” 34–35.

36

Christine Helmer

theological system of The Christian Faith. In the introduction, the terms “essence of religion” and “essence of Christianity” are assigned minimal definition. The definitions are meant to bring other disciplines to bear on theology, like ethics and philosophy of religion that also treat the subject matter of human agency in history. In this way, theology has conversation partners in the university about a subject that is important to it. Religion is, in fact, a necessary and non-reducible dimension to human existence. Theology acknowledges this to be the case, and does so in a way that tries to convince other disciplines too. The center of the introduction is § 4. In this paragraph, Schleiermacher concludes his previous discussion concerning the dimensions of the soul by laying out the key concept of religion as the feeling of absolute dependence. The proposition states, “The common element … in piety … is this: the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in relation to God.”26 In other words, Schleiermacher relates religious experience to its cause that exists outside of the realm of self and world: the “Whence.” It is important to note that Schleiermacher added the final clause of the proposition (“the consciousness… of being in relation to God”) only after his 1820 first edition had encountered criticism concerning the unusual terminology of “Whence.” This term as it occurs in the introduction is not yet identified with the God of historical Christianity because, as Schleiermacher goes on to claim, God as a Christian term is only available when studying the history of Christianity. At this point in the introduction, the analysis focuses on the psychological structure of the soul in which a feeling registers the passivity of all of existence. Finite consciousness, the aspect of consciousness that has temporal and spatial limitation, registers the self ’s relative freedom and relative dependence in relation to the world. Immediate self-consciousness, the aspect of the soul that grounds temporal consciousness as the continuity of the self through time, is an awareness that there is no instance of absolute freedom in the world. Rather, the negation of the feeling of absolute dependence refers absolute freedom to the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence: the self experiences itself together with the world in absolute dependence on an external cause.27 The feeling of absolute dependence is the feeling that all of existence is a gift. The pressing question for Lutherans at this point is: how does feeling relate to language? Does feeling occur at a pre-linguistic level that is only at a secondary 26 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart, trans. D. M. Baillie et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), § 4, proposition (p. 12). To be cited as CF. 27 “Therefore in any temporal existence a feeling of absolute freedom can have no place … But the self-consciousness which accompanies all our activity, and therefore, since that is never zero, accompanies our whole existence, and negatives absolute freedom, itself precisely a consciousness of absolute dependence: for it is a consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us …” CF § 4, 3 (p. 16).

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

37

stage couched in particular Christian discourse? In order to answer this question we need to consider how Schleiermacher defines the essence of Christianity in the introduction to the Christian Faith. Schleiermacher is careful to introduce concepts only as they become relevant in his analysis. The structure of consciousness is the first step in analyzing the particular area of the soul that registers religious feeling. In a second step, Schleiermacher specifies the essence of Christianity in order to introduce the person at the center of all Christian history and reflection: Jesus of Nazareth. Schleiermacher defines Christianity in § 11 as “a monotheistic faith … [that] is essentially distinguished from all other such faiths by the fact that in it everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.”28 To the person of Jesus of Nazareth is attributed the work of redemption. Jesus is the Redeemer who accomplishes the redemption of the world. Schleiermacher’s position is, in short, a maximal attribution of redemption to Jesus. Yet how does the feeling of absolute dependence relate to Jesus’ person and work? This is the crux of the question concerning experience and language. How does Schleiermacher connect feeling with the redemption that Jesus accomplishes? There are two steps in the answer to this question. The first has to do with the basic psychological account that Schleiermacher gives of two states of the soul. This discussion is included in the introduction to The Christian Faith, and therefore is not considered the subject of theology, but of a general account for the purpose of connecting psychology in theology to ethics and the study of the human soul and agency in ethics and philosophy of religion. Thus the basic concept is introduced that will then in the theological section of The Christian Faith be explicated in terms of Jesus’ work. Schleiermacher introduces the basic concept of two possible states of the soul in § 5. The feeling of absolute dependence, or in other words immediate selfconsciousness, exists in two possible relations to temporal consciousness. One permutation is when temporal consciousness, the consciousness existing in time and space, inhibits the feeling of absolute dependence. This situation can occur when the self is bogged down by worries, by physical ailment, by limiting historical and political conditions, in short any situation in which consciousness is prevented from manifesting a feeling of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher will eventually, in the theological section of The Christian Faith, identify this state as “sin.” The opposite relation, when immediate self-consciousness permeates sensible self-consciousness “with ease” is eventually deemed the state of redemption.29 Redemption means that at every moment in a human life, the self is 28 CF § 11, proposition (p. 52). 29 The significant passage in § 5 occurs under corollary 4: “That is to say: as the emergence of this higher self-consciousness at all means an enhancement of life, so whenever it emerges

38

Christine Helmer

oriented as a whole to an awareness that all of existence is grounded in God. Gratitude is the response to the gift. Again we must follow Schleiermacher’s logic as he carefully develops the terms of his analysis. While basic psychological analysis succeeds in delineating two possible states, the theological analysis relates Jesus to redemption. In a subsequent paragraph, § 14, Schleiermacher explains how a person can come into Jesus’ proximity and thereby have access to his redemptive action.30 The subject of this paragraph is the issue of how one enters into the community of Jesus. This is crucial for Schleiermacher because it is only in community with Jesus that his redemptive influence can be experienced. Hence we see that, although reading the introduction forward from feeling to Christian community in which the discourse is specific about Jesus and redemption, the whole analysis actually prefers to acknowledge the existence of Christianity in its constant intimate center on Christ. Schleiermacher rehearses the classic Pauline emphasis on how one comes into contact with Jesus: through the word of preaching consistent with the biblical witness.31 Faith comes by hearing (cf. Rom. 10:17). When the gospel is preached, it communicates Christ’s person that is also his work of redemption. Coming into proximity of Jesus means having one’s consciousness transformed in such a way that the feeling of absolute dependence permeates everyday activities “with ease.” While the introduction to The Christian Faith contains the important paragraph insisting on proclamation that communicates Jesus’ redemptive influence, the theological section further develops this idea. Schleiermacher insists that church proclamation is the only way by which the person of Jesus is rendered present to the community. It is his presence that is redemptive. Schleiermacher insists on this point in § 100: “And thus the total effective influence of Christ is only the continuation of the creative divine activity out of which the Person of Christ arose.”32 Proclamation is intrinsic to the way in which Jesus becomes present in the community and mediates redemption to it. The person of Jesus is with ease, to enter into a relation with a sensible determination, whether pleasant or unpleasant, this means an easy progress of that higher life, and bears, by comparison, the stamp of joy. And as the disappearance of the higher consciousness, if it could be perceived would mean a diminution of life, so whenever it emerges with difficulty, this approximates to an absence of it, and can only be felt as an inhibition of the higher life” (p. 24; italics in published translation.) 30 CF § 14, proposition (p. 68): “There is no other way of obtaining participation in the Christian communion than through faith in Jesus as the Redeemer.” 31 CF § 14, 1 (pp. 68–69): “And so from the beginning only those people have attached themselves to Christ in His new community whose religious self-consciousness had taken the form of a need of redemption, and who now became assured in themselves of Christ’s redeeming power… This, moreover, is what has ever since constituted the essence of all direct Christian preaching.” 32 CF § 100, 2 (p. 427).

Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

39

“now mediated by those who preach Him; but they being appropriated by Him as His instruments, the activity really proceeds from Him and is essentially His own.”33 While preaching is the work of pastors in the church, it is to Jesus that redemption must be attributed. Jesus is sole source and cause of redemption, it is through preaching that the redemption he offers by virtue of his person can become a reality to those who hear the gospel. To sum up: The basic concepts of sin, redemption, and the communication of the person of Jesus that transmits redemption to hearers are first defined in the introduction to The Christian Faith. In this location, there is an insistence on the Christological parameters couching sin, redemption, and the communication of redemption. Yet the concepts are introduced with a minimal content in order to demonstrate their relevance to a broader discussion about human subjectivity, agency, and religion. Schleiermacher develops his concepts in meticulous steps. The overall emerging picture, even in the early parts of the introduction, in no way determines religious consciousness in independence from the particular, and in Schleiermacher’s case, Christian determination. Schleiermacher keeps to a minimal description because at this stage in his argumentation, he wants to prevent any rational determination to religious content. The content in Christianity is determined solely by the particular influence of Jesus of Nazareth. The later theological sections make this Christological point crystal clear.

Conclusion There are many more rich points in Schleiermacher’s theology that merit discussion. Some discussion should even be critical, yet only after Schleiermacher is interpreted correctly. Specific issues concern his rejection of the canonical status of the Old Testament, and his restriction of the person of Jesus to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, both of which entail erosions of an Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity. The main point to underline, however, is that Schleiermacher’s basic theological commitments represent continuity with the Christian tradition regarding the centrality of Jesus’ person for the universal work of redemption and the preaching that accomplishes this communication. Schleiermacher’s concept of religious experience can further help Lutherans appreciate that Christian communication has an experiential component: the glimmer of a new state of consciousness when the feeling of absolute dependence permeates sensible selfconsciousness with ease. Lutherans can learn from Schleiermacher that redemption is not merely the hearing of the external word but that there is a 33 CF § 108, 5 (p. 491).

40

Christine Helmer

subjective dimension to the reception of redemption. When Christ is rendered present in proclamation, a personal and communal transformation is felt at the depths of subjectivity. The new creation available in Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17) means to become more truly human. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Saint Louis University also generously supported this publication.

Mark Mattes

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

When Benedetto Croce published his classic study of Hegel’s philosophy What is Living and What is Dead in the Thought of Hegel1 at the beginning of the twentieth century, one might have predicted that Hegel’s influence would be negligible, if not in fact dead, at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Certainly, the twentieth century has not favored some important aspects of Hegel’s thinking, specifically his commitment to a single metanarrative or metaphysical vision of the whole and his belief that human endeavor can accomplish ethical and spiritual progress in the world. However, other equally important aspects of his thinking, such as his analysis of power as the basis for one’s socially-construed identity, the concept of spirit (Geist) as the intelligible horizon by which to interpret the world,2 the theme of negation as a necessary aspect of life processes, and his view of reality as “mad,”3 as the “Bacchanalian revel,” have stimulated many contemporary intellectual imaginations. Indeed, Hegel has had a far greater impact on twentieth century thinking than he had on that of his own, the nineteenth, which after Hegel was dominated by neo-Kantian agendas.4 Many contemporary intellectual movements that have developed in critical engagement with Hegel’s fecund thinking, such as Marxism,5 Existentialism, 1 Benedetto Croce, What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Thought of Hegel, trans. Douglas Ainslie (New York: Russell & Russell, 1915). 2 See especially Peter Hodgson’s appropriation of Hegel’s view of spirit in God in History: Shapes of Freedom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989). 3 Croce, What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Thought of Hegel, 29. 4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty suggests that “all of the great philosophical ideas of the past century… had their beginnings in Hegel.” See Sense and Non-sense, trans. Hubert Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 63. Michel Foucault contends that even though “our entire epoch struggles to disengage itself from Hegel” yet Hegel always remains “close to us.” See The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 235. 5 Marxists have likewise been astute Hegel interpreters. See, for example, Jean Hyppolite’s Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974); Georg Lukàcs, The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics, trans. Rodney Livingston (Cam-

42

Mark Mattes

Deconstructionism,6 and even analytic philosophy (in so far as it has strongly rejected Hegelian metaphysics as lacking empirical warrant) guarantee that Hegel’s thinking will continue to influence the new century. Today Hegel lives with even greater strength than in the past, in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, literary criticism, hermeneutics, and aesthetics, as thinkers try creatively to rethink his ideas rather than repristinate or ignore them.7 Hegel’s impact upon theology and the philosophy of religion has been no less significant.8 Hegel often provides a decisive philosophical framework for many bridge: MIT Press, 1966); and Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. James H. Nichols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969). 6 For Hegel’s influence on Jacques Derrida, see Derrida’s Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 43–44, 101 (note 13); Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 251–277; and Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4–6. 7 Commentators during the last half-century have offered some superb works on Hegel’s thought. For two classical studies, see W.T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition (New York: Dover, 1955) and J.N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford, 1958); for important recent Hegel studies see Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) and Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1979); Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); HansGeorg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); Raymond Plant, Hegel: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); Michael Rosen, Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); John Burbidge, On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a Commentary (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1981); and from the State University of New York, Albany, Series in Hegelian Studies: Donald Phillip Verene, Hegel’s Recollection: A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1985), William Desmond, Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (1986), Daniel Berthold-Bond, Hegel’s Grand Synthesis: A Study of Being, Thought, and History (1989), and Robert R. Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (1992); for commentaries on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, see Quentin Lauer’s A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), and Howard Kainz’s Hegel’s Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary (University of Alabama Press, 1976) and Hegel’s Phenomenology: Part II (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983); for collections of essays on Hegel’s thinking, see Alasdair MacIntyre, ed., Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), Michael Inwood, ed., Hegel, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), and Shaun Gallagher, ed., Hegel, History, and Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 8 See Ulrich Asendorf, Luther und Hegel: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung einer neuen Systematischen Theologie (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982); Karl Barth, Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl, trans. H.H. Hartwell (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 268–305; Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 63–104; Hans Küng, The Incarnation of God, trans. J.R. Stephenson (New York: Crossroad, 1987); Dale Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity: Understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (London: University of Scranton Press, 1990); Emil Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Christian Link, Hegels Wort—Gott selbst ist tot (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974); Walter

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

43

new Trinitarian theorists such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, and Eberhard Jüngel.9 By way of the thinking of Karl Marx, who offered Hegel’s “master-slave” dialectic as the paradigmatic example that describes actual human relations, Hegel indirectly speaks through liberation and some feminist theologies. Most importantly, much of today’s talk of a “suffering God,” credited as a “new orthodoxy,”10 is decisively indebted to Hegel’s affirmation of deipassionism. While much current theology is dependent on Hegelian themes and ideas, Hegel’s relation to the Christian faith has been notoriously difficult to understand. Is Hegel a thoroughly secularized thinker who in his discussions of religion was simply and insincerely patronizing Christianity? 11 Or, is Hegel best understood as a kind of “post-atheistic” thinker? 12 Or, is Hegel indeed the “orthodox” Christian philosopher that he himself claimed he was? 13 That Hegel was genuinely and sincerely a religious thinker was best seen by Nietzsche, indisputably an anti-Christian thinker, who claimed that One needs only to pronounce the words ‘Tübingen Seminary’, in order to understand what German philosophy really is at bottom, i. e., theology in disguise.14

Hegel repeatedly specified his confessional adherence. In his “Introduction” to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy he claimed that “we Lutherans (I am and

9 10 11 12 13 14

Jaeschke, Reason in Religion: The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, trans. J. Michael Steward and Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Deland Anderson, Hegel’s Speculative Good Friday: The Death of God in Philosophical Perspective (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996); Alan Olson, Hegel and Spirit: Philosophy as Pneumatology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and several volumes in the State University of New York Press, Albany: James Yerkes, The Christology of Hegel (1983), John Burbidge, Hegel on Logic and Religion: The Reasonableness of Christianity (1992), David Kolb, ed. New Perspectives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (1992), Philip M. Merklinger, Philosophy, Theology, and Hegel’s Berlin Philosophy of Religion, 1821–1827 (1993), and, most importantly, Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (1994). See John Millbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 180. See Ronald Goetz, “The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy” in The Christian Century 103/13 (April 16, 1986): 385–389. See Robert Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 582. Küng, 169. This position is most apt to be maintained by Fackenheim, Yerkes, Asendorf, Pannenberg, and Schlitt. As quoted by Küng, 55. Born in 1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel studied theology at the Tübingen Stift, although as Claude Welch notes, “he was much more interested in the new spirit emerging outside the curriculum—the spirit of Kant, of Spinoza rediscovered, of Herder, of Sturm und Drang, as well as of Greek and especially Platonic philosophy. Hölderlin and Schelling were his close friends in the Stift” (Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972], 1:86). After studying at Bern and Frankfurt, he lectured on philosophy at Jena (1801–6). After briefly teaching at Bamberg and Nuremberg, he lectured at Heidelberg (1816–18) and then finally at Berlin (from 1818 until his death in 1831).

44

Mark Mattes

will remain one) have a better faith.”15 In a letter to Karl von Altenstein, the Prussian Minister of Religious and Educational Affairs, Hegel wrote that he had “explained and expressed Luther’s teachings as true, and as recognized by philosophy as true”16 and he also claimed that he is a professor “who prides himself on having been baptized and raised a Lutheran …”17 Similarly, he wrote to a neopietist critic, the orientalist Friedrich August Gottreu Tholuck, “I am a Lutheran, and through philosophy have been at once completely confirmed in Lutheranism.”18 Hegel claimed to be a Lutheran thinker. This claim raises important questions. Is Hegel the Lutheran thinker he claimed to be? Why was Hegel so adamant in identifying his thinking with the Lutheran confessional stance? Was he polemically asserting his Lutheran heritage in order to contrast his thinking with that of his Reformed colleague in the Theology Department at the University of Berlin, Friedrich Schleiermacher? Most importantly, did Hegel see a crucial and binding connection between Lutheran theology and his philosophy? The answer to these questions can serve to advance Hegel studies since Hegel’s Lutheran identity is often raised to defend the position that Hegel genuinely saw himself as a religious thinker. The question of how, specifically, Hegel’s self-professed Lutheranism affected his thinking needs substantive clarification. Ulrich Asendorf claims that there are strong parallels between Luther’s theology and Hegel’s philosophy and that in conversation with one another they both can provide a foundation for a modern dialectical approach to theology.19 In contrast, Cyril O’Regan suggests that Luther was not a central factor but simply a “warranting presence” for Hegel’s thinking.20 In response to Asendorf and O’Regan, this study will examine the relationship between Luther and Hegel by arguing for four conclusions. First, while Hegel possibly overstates his connection or loyalty to Luther, Lutheran thinking did provide fundamental theological and Christological axioms that Hegel used as sources by which intrinsically to structure his mature thinking. In particular, Lutheran theology helped Hegel positively to construe death and negation as crucial features for his overall metaphysical attempt to reconcile the finite and the infinite. The religious imagery of death and resurrection, central to Lutheran piety, and the distinctive Lutheran interpretation of the Christological doctrine of 15 “Wir Lutheraner—ich bin es und will es bleiben—haben nur jener ursprünglichen Glauben” in Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, trans. E.S. Haldane (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 73 [Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 13, ed. Karl Michelet (Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1833), 89]. 16 Georg Hegel, Letter, 572–74 (April 3, 1826) in Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 531. 17 Hegel, Letter 572–74 (April 3, 1826) in Hegel: The Letters, 532. 18 Hegel, Letter 514a ( July 3, 1826) in Hegel: The Letters, 520. 19 Asendorf, Luther und Hegel, 385. 20 O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 108.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

45

the “communication of attributes” (communicatio idiomatum) between the divine and the human in Jesus Christ, along with the implications of this doctrine for sacramental theology, were important theological resources that Hegel saw as paralleling his philosophical project. However, as we shall see, Hegel at times read his Lutheranism through the lens of Calvinism. Second, his commitment to the mystic theosophy of Jacob Boehme (1575–1642) overshadowed Hegel’s overall understanding of Lutheranism. Third, Hegel’s attempt to reconcile the finite and the infinite is directed by ideals of the German Romantic movement, and not Lutheranism. Hence, Hegel’s metaphysical program is guided by a different theological agenda than that of Luther’s. Nevertheless, Hegel would use Lutheran teachings, familiar to him through his seminary education and cultural upbringing, to warrant his attempt to humanize God and deify humanity. And, finally, Luther’s thinking about the relation between God and the world may be more valuable than Hegel’s in addressing contemporary concerns, particularly the need to set limits or boundaries to the human expansionism that threatens the well-being of all earthly life.

Hegel’s Overall Project in Philosophical Theology In order to grasp just where and how Luther and Lutheranism fit into Hegel’s mature philosophical vision, it is important to specify Hegel’s overall philosophical project. Hegel is best understood as attempting to overcome certain bifurcations in philosophy that he and other German Idealists, such as J.G. Fichte (1762–1814) and F.W.J. Schelling (1775–1854), inherited from Enlightenment thinkers, such as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and G.E. Lessing (1729–1781). For Kant, reason and passion, duty and inclination, autonomy and heteronomy, appearance (the phenomenal) and reality (the noumenal), are separated from each other as if by an unbridgeable ontological chasm. Kant claimed that the positive result of his thinking for Christianity was that he has made “room for faith.”21 However, Hegel saw Kant’s position as frustrating and unacceptable because it forever kept humanity in the dark, separated from reality as such. For Lessing, the “eternal truths of reason” are contrasted with the accidental and contingent truths of history.22 Again, for Hegel, Lessing’s thinking is unacceptable because it divides the human spirit; it separates human life as em21 Kant wrote, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.” See his Preface to the 2nd edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929), 29. 22 Lessing maintains that the “… accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason”; see Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. and trans. Henry Chadwick (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956), 53.

46

Mark Mattes

bodied in history from human thought. By demonstrating the interconnectedness of all reality as a process seeking the goal of its own self-fulfillment by means of its own self-unfolding, Hegel believed that he could translate the issues that Kant and Lessing raised into a new, different matrix in which these bifurcations would dissolve. Hegel intended to develop a systematic, comprehensive or “scientific”23 outlook on the whole of cosmic and human history that he terms “Absolute Spirit.” With this concept, Hegel sought to show that the divine whole, the infinite, is absolute in the sense that all finite relations are internal to it. Hegel wanted to demonstrate that the infinite gives itself life, feeling, and meaning by means of its various incarnations in finite things and experience, which as forms of consciousness for both humanity and all reality, are stages on the way to its self-fulfillment. What Hegel took from Lutheranism in order to combat Kant and Lessing is the confidence that the finite is capable of bearing the infinite (finitum capax infiniti). Hegel however, in contradistinction to Luther, will reinterpret this Christological doctrine not as the divine promise that—as sacramentally conceived—nature can convey grace when coupled with the divine word, but as an anthropological teaching that there is an ontological continuum between the infinite and the finite. It is his perspective that the divine consciousness is concretizing and giving reality to its life when and as mediated by finite, human forms of consciousness. Hegel’s move is not theologically legitimate because the Christological doctrine is limited to the person of Jesus Christ; it is not an attempt to present a general anthropological truth. While Lutheran theological axioms certainly did not drive Hegel’s thinking, they provided sources he saw as congenial to his project to overcome the Enlightenment bifurcations of Kant and Lessing. In this regard, Hegel was helped even more by his appropriation of the thinking of the heterodox, yet nominally “Lutheran” mystic, Jacob Boehme, as Cyril O’Regan maintains. While Boehme offered Hegel a way of understanding the infinite or absolute as self-differentiating and self-reconstituting,24 and was thus more influential than Luther for Hegel’s development of his metaphysical project, Lutheran theological insights as based on the finitum capax infiniti Christological doctrine, particularly the possible prospect of deipassionism which some think that this doctrine suggests, provided Hegel a substantive, and not merely rhetorical, means for understanding the “speculative” (as he would put it) relation between the finite and the infinite.25 To show this claim, we need to outline Hegel’s appeal to Lutheran 23 See Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 1 [Phänomenologie des Geistes, vol. 9, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard Haede (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1980), 9]. 24 See O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 119. 25 Alan Olson tends to ground Hegel’s “instinctive appreciation” of Luther in Luther’s pneumatology, not his Christology, as is the tendency in this paper. Olson’s approach to the

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

47

theology in the development of his mature philosophical outlook and how it relates to crucial Hegelian concepts, such as the “Calvary of Absolute Spirit,”26 freedom as the telos of absolute spirit, and the concept of absolute spirit itself.

Hegel’s View of Spirit as a Response to Kant and Lessing Kantian ethics and a love for the ancient Greeks influenced Hegel as a young theology student. He disdained his seminary teachers’ attempt to mediate orthodox Lutheran theology with modern Kantian ethics. Indeed, due to the influence of Kant, the young Hegel for the most part rejected Lutheranism as a species of “positive religion,” religion seen as imposing dogmas, rituals, and creeds heteronomously alien to reason.27 What the youthful Hegel sought was the attempt to create a religion similar to that of the ancient Greeks, which appealed to the whole person, affirmed human autonomy, and affirmed the city-state. The ideal religion as a support for an ideal government would always appeal to Hegel, even long after he had given up the Greek model as untranslatable into the modern world. Eventually, however, Hegel would question his uncritical internalization and appropriation of Kantian standards of evaluating “positive” religion. He would find Kant’s ethics inadequate overall in its ability to address the needs of the whole person. In his first post as a tutor for a wealthy family in Berne and then later in the same position in Frankfurt, Hegel was to become increasingly critical of Kant’s ethics and epistemology. Hegel yearned for a vision of reality in which all bifurcations, all “otherness,” would be ultimately or metaphysically sublated (overcome as alien yet preserved in a common life as different). In order to reach this goal, Hegel reassessed the importance of Christianity.28 Greek religion offered beauty as an ideal for life. Kantian religion provided reason as the goal and relation between Hegel and Luther is instructive; pneumatology is an important, easily ignored, link between these two thinkers. However, the advantage of a Christological approach to the two helps us focus on the categories of infinite and finite which are clearly important to both, and which show how Hegel radically reinterprets Luther. See Olson, Hegel and Spirit, 155–57. 26 See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 493. 27 See especially Georg Hegel, “The Positivity of the Christian Religion” in Hegel’s Early Theological Writings, trans. T.M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), 67–181 [“Die Positivität der christlichen Religion” (1795/1796), vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 104–229]. 28 See Georg Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate” in the Early Theological Writings, 278–79, where Hegel writes “In love man has found himself again in another. Since love is a unification of life, it presupposes division, a development of life, a developed many-sidedness of life” [“Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksaal,” vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 394].

48

Mark Mattes

form of an authentic life. Christianity, however, he came to maintain, could surpass these two positions by suggesting and offering a view of love as the dynamic that overcomes all otherness or difference without denying the integrity of that which is other, indeed fulfilling the integrity of the other. With this in mind, Hegel was prepared to rethink the importance of the particular as an embodiment of the universal in ways that would push the boundaries of both Kant’s bifurcation of appearance and reality and Lessing’s bifurcation of history and reason. For Hegel, the historical man Jesus could mediate the eternal word and disclose the true nature of reality as such. In Hegel’s estimation of Jesus then, The son of God is also son of man; the divine in a particular shape appears as a man [das Göttliche in einer besonderen Gestalt erscheint]. The connection of infinite and finite is of course a “holy mystery,” because this connection is life itself. Reflective thinking, which partitions life, can distinguish it into infinite and finite, and then it is only the restriction, the finite regarded by itself, which affords the concept of man as opposed to the divine. But outside reflective thinking, and in truth, there is no such restriction.29

Hegel here seems to acknowledge two levels of reality and experience. At one level finite and infinite can be separated and distinguished. Yet, at another, deeper level they share a common home-ground, an ontological continuum. Hegel would see his philosophical calling as the quest to offer a metaphysical demonstration of how the infinite and the finite can be one. It should be clear that Hegel was not affirming what has been called the “scandal of particularity” with his discussion of Jesus Christ as the particular embodiment or concretization of God. After all, he asserts that all people, spiritually regarded, are in some sense likewise embodiments of God, sharing a common spirit with God. He reasons: how could people acknowledge the man Jesus as God in the flesh, if they themselves did not share in their hearts the same spiritual reality as the spiritual reality present in Jesus? After all, it is like that knows like.30 These pantheistic, or perhaps panentheistic sentiments, common to many Romantics, are quite foreign to Luther, though not to all forms of Lutheranism, particularly that of the mystic Jacob Boehme, whose works Hegel had read as a student at Tübingen.

29 Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity,“ 262 [“Der Geist des Christentums,” 378]. 30 Hence, Hegel argued, “How could anything but a spirit know a spirit? The relation of spirit to spirit is a feeling of harmony, is their unification; how could heterogeneity be unified? Faith in the divine is only possible if in the believer himself there is a divine element which rediscovers itself, its own nature, in that on which it believes, even if it be unconscious that what it has found is its own nature.” He further corroborates this thought with the assertion that “faith in the divine grows out of the divinity of the believer’s own nature; only a modification of the Godhead can know the Godhead…” See Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity,” 266 [“Der Geist des Christentums,” 382].

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

49

Boehme perceived the whole of reality as an exitus that self-differentiates the whole and a reditus or return into itself as a whole, though now enriched by experience. In his Theoscopia, or The Divine Intuition Boehme claimed that “Without contradiction nothing can become manifest to itself; for if it has nothing to resist it, it goes continually outward and does not return again into itself. But if it does not return into itself as into that from which it originally came, it knows nothing of the primal being.”31 For Boehme and for Hegel the experience of self-differentiation is decisive for the life of the infinite or the whole. However, they postulate that the self-differentiation of the whole is for the sake of reinforcing the ultimate or final oneness of all things (for Hegel, an “identity of identity and difference”), since the metaphysical ultimate differentiates itself into otherness and manyness precisely for the purpose of establishing its own knowledge of its oneness with the many by discovering the many as vehicles that embody and express its own life. Hegel saw his perspective as a significant advance on Spinoza’s (1632–1677) attempt to comprehend the whole, because he expressed the absolute as “subject” and not merely as “substance.”32 That is to say, Hegel envisioned the whole as a process of the self-unfolding of the absolute coming to its own self-awareness in and through the finite realm, including human nature. In contradistinction to Spinoza, Hegel believed that he could show how the absolute is establishing intelligence and intelligibility in the world in order to help itself come to its own sense of self-awareness. In many respects, Hegel’s philosophical project was to make God thinkable. Of course, the classical Christian heritage had always argued that God was unthinkable, due to the profound ontological discontinuity between uncreated being and created being. From an entirely different perspective, Kant had reinforced the notion of God’s unthinkability because God as a metaphysical category, independent of all sense experience, transcended the boundaries of reason’s ability to comprehend it. Hence, as we have seen, Kant claimed that his philosophy, in contrast to the philosophical theology of the Deists, made room for faith. For Hegel, Kant has simply and appallingly reduced Christian truth claims to sheer irrationality. It is appalling for Hegel not because Hegel’s first loyalty is to Christian orthodoxy. After all, Hegel’s goal was not to do Christian apologetics in light of Kant’s challenges. Rather, it was to provide an intellectual scheme that could offer a solid “scientific” basis for his supposition that the infinite is intelligible or, theologically phrased, that God is comprehensible. While Boehme’s mysticism provided the content for Hegel’s metaphysics, the goal of which was to think God, and to overcome Lessing’s and Kant’s bifurcations, Lutheran doctrine would provide Hegel important clues for how to for31 As quoted by O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 119. 32 See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 10 [Phänomenologie, 18].

50

Mark Mattes

mulate this metaphysics. In Faith and Knowledge (1802) Hegel directly engaged and countered Kantian thinking as a means to re-envision the absolute as immanent in and not alien to the world. Hegel contended that since Kant had subjected faith to the criteria of autonomous reason, faith was made to be seen as irrational, since it can never be checked by reference to reality-as-such, itself inaccessible to reason. In response, Hegel sought a continuum between faith and reason. Faith and reason ought not to be seen as opposites, since both are apprehending God but at different levels of spiritual insight. For Hegel, Kant’s position was representative of the wider problem of how to determine how the finite and the infinite relate. Far from seeing faith as irrelevant to solving this problem, Hegel senses that Protestantism provides a clue for how the finite and the infinite should be related. He claimed that Protestantism’s inherent fear of idolatry, “reducing the sacred grove to mere timber,” led it to subjectivize religion, encouraging religion to build “its temples and altars in the heart of the individual.”33 Hegel saw Protestantism’s tendency to “inwardize” religion as paradoxically a promise and a danger. As a promise, it offers the incipient beginnings of the development of the meaning of genuine freedom, since the development of political freedom in history begins from within as self-determination, a result of Protestantism’s “inwardized” spirituality. In this sense, Hegel would later admire Luther as the forerunner of genuine freedom,34 which can only be had in its mature phase within a political community, and not merely in the feelings or sentiments of the individual believer. Hegel here, however, notes just how lop-sided or dangerous it is to “inwardize” freedom and ignore the external, political ramifications of this venture, since, as he claimed, “the inner must be externalized; intention must become effective in action; immediate religious sentiment must be expressed in external gesture; and faith, though it flees from the objectivity of cognition, must become objective to itself in thought, concepts, and words.”35 Hegel notes that Protestantism, fearing idolatry, ignores its own Lutheran position that finite things can in fact convey the infinite. Hence, “It is precisely through its [Kantian Protestantism’s] flight from the finite and through its rigidity that subjectivity turns the beautiful into things—the grove into timber, the images into things that have eyes and do not see, ears and do not

33 Georg Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, trans. Walter Cerf and H.S. Harris (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1977), 57. 34 Georg Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1974), 148 [Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 15 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1836), 254]. 35 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 57 [Glauben und Wissen in Jenaer Kritische Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Hartmut Buchner and Otto Pöggeler (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968), 317].

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

51

hear.”36 For Hegel, Kant misunderstood subjectivity as something separable from objectivity, the supposed contents of the noumenal realm. Hegel accused the Kantians of being inconsistent. They saw thinking and the infinite as opposites. The infinite cannot be thought. Yet, Hegel pointed out, they recognize that the ability to think is itself infinite, an infinite process of negating false conceptions of truth and even the absolute. For Hegel, this process of experiencing self-contradiction when seeking to describe all reality provides a clue for constructing a proposed continuum between thinking and being. This continuum is not, to use a geometrical metaphor, a straight line. It is rather a zigzagged kind of continuity, since at every moment the continuum is based on negation, the process of nullifying forms of consciousness that fail to conceptualize the absolute. Since these negations are specific or determinate, they imply or suggest forms of consciousness in their place as new possibilities for reenvisioning the absolute. Hence, though the Kantians propose thinking as potentially an infinite process or “pure nullification of the antithesis or of finitude,”37 they must recognize that this implies the positive consequences for the enterprise of metaphysics: that the noumenal realm can become unveiled and comprehensible. The process of determinate negation “is at the same time also the spring of eternal movement, the spring of that finitude which is infinite because it eternally nullifies itself. Out of this nothing and pure night of infinity, as out of the secret abyss that is its birthplace, the truth lifts itself upward.”38 In other words, the infinite is capable of being thought, although the attempt to reach the actual philosophical stance that conceptualizes the infinite will be an exasperating undertaking, since any metaphysical conception of the ultimate short of matching the reality of this ultimate will need to pass away or die and allow other proposals to take its place. The conception of reality implied here by Hegel is that reality is fecund, able to give birth to a plethora of forms and shapes of life. Reality, however, is also inescapably violent, since new proposals of ultimate reality are dependent upon and cannot advance apart from the death of ontologically and historically prior forms of life, which have failed to reflect the whole. Hence, the negative is not wholly negative for Hegel. It provides the fuel or energy for the absolute to posit new shapes or forms for its existence.

36 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 58 [Glauben und Wissen, 317]. 37 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 190 [Glauben und Wissen, 423]. 38 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 190.

52

Mark Mattes

The Speculative Good Friday At this point, we must recognize that Hegel believed that he had surmounted the bifurcation created by Kant. Hegel has shown that the attempt to bifurcate thought and being is self-contradictory, and thus cannot be maintained. He has also argued that the bifurcation itself is somewhat due to the understanding’s ability to make distinctions, an important consequence of the mind sharing a common home-ground with absolute spirit’s own process of self-discovery by means of self-differentiation. Ultimate truth, for Hegel, is the attempt to match our cognitive awareness with that of the absolute’s, and then to understand that the absolute is discovering itself in and through our own self-awareness. Since Hegel believed that he could show history to be the field in which the eternal is manifesting itself, he will also have overcome Lessing’s bifurcation between the eternal truths of reason and the contingent truths of history. Yet, how Hegel proceeded to this theory of ultimate truth was influenced by a Lutheran insight into how the finite and infinite relate in the person of Christ. This insight was thematized in Faith and Understanding with Hegel’s appeal to the “speculative Good Friday” (speculativen Charfreytag) 39 and his appeal to the “Lutheran” hymn that affirms, “God himself is dead” (Gott selbst ist todt).40 Again, Hegel wanted to provide a “scientific” basis for the mystic insight that God and the world of nature and humanity are one. In so doing, he showed that the unity is far more complex than the mystic insight seems to indicate. It is an “identity of identity and difference” that unifies God and the world. However, he also sought to show that this complex unity is also intelligible, open to all inquirers who would want to investigate this truth, and not just the result of mystic insight. In other words, Hegel’s philosophical project would be to demonstrate the truth of this complex identity of God and the world, the infinite and the finite. He expounded this demonstration with originality in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). The concept, “speculative Good Friday,” seemed to serve two complementary functions for Hegel in Faith and Knowledge. First, it offered a metaphor by which to summarize the dynamics of determinate negation that we have just examined. Since negation helps to fuel the process of the absolute in its quest for selfactualization, it is centered in reality to the same extent that the historic Good Friday is inescapably a mark of Christianity. As “speculative,” a metaphysical claim with profound anthropological implications and in this regard quite rad39 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 191 [Glaube und Wissen, 414]. 40 Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, 190 [Glaube und Wissen, 414]. The hymn is “O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid” written by Johan Rist around 1641. Rist writes: O great distress!/ God himself lies dead./ On the cross he died,/ and by doing so he has won for us the realm of heaven.” See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 64.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

53

ically different from Luther’s “theology of the cross” (theologia crucis), Hegel’s metaphor here provided an image for the overall positive synthesis between the finite and the infinite that he has been arguing for. Luther, in contrast, never looks to Good Friday in order to speculate into God’s inner life. Indeed, for Luther, Hegel’s project would be a species of the “theology of glory,” which he was protesting against. Second, with this metaphor, Hegel acknowledged the radical secularity that developed due to modernity’s attempt to “domesticate transcendence,” as William Placher has phrased it.41 Modern philosophy, here a rebellious child of Christianity,42 set in motion a process of de-sacralizing the cosmos to an unprecedented degree. Hegel was, with his own abstract terminology, simply acknowledging this fact, and arguing that it could offer a new spiritual prospect for religion, instead of its demise in the modern world. If God as a transcendent other has died due to the fact that a thinker like Kant with his notion of a noumenal realm has made the concept of God “vacuous,” this does not mean that some notion of the divine cannot be reconstituted or resurrected, particularly if such a notion of the divine can offer philosophy a path for reconciling the finite with the infinite. For Hegel, it was good that modernity became atheistic; after all, the traditional notion of God simply reinforces the bifurcations that irreconcilably separate the finite from the infinite. If this separation is to be overcome, it is necessary and even good that the false notion of God as an uncreated, supernatural substance dies. It is good that Kantian “critical philosophy” helped kill this false theistic notion. Secularity has blossomed with this perspective. From Hegel’s religious perspective, this atheistic moment in intellectual history was a necessary moment for the development of a new outlook on God, now seen as a subject, no longer as a divine substance or “other” to the world, but as immanent in the world, interpreted as spirit or Geist, God embodied in and as an authentic community. The Lutheran hymn, speaking of “God’s death,” expresses and reflects the doctrine of the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum), which is itself a postulate of the doctrine that the finite can bear the infinite. For Luther, this notion, the Christological underpinnings for the dispute with Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) over the nature of the “real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, 41 I am taking this term from William C. Placher. See his The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). 42 Craig Gay writes “… the scientific willingness to take pains to investigate the natural order stems from the Christian conviction that the creation bears the gracious stamp of its Maker. In addition, the Christian religion emphasizes the importance of human agency in healing and restoring created relationships. Love, Christianly understood, requires us to try to improve the material conditions of our neighbor’s life and so to assume an active, and not simply a passive, stance vis-à-vis nature.” See his The Way of the (Modern) World or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as if God Doesn’t Exist (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 108.

54

Mark Mattes

was a crucial, and non-negotiable, aspect of his understanding of the promises of the Christian faith.43 If, as Zwingli maintained, Christ was not literally present in the supper because the distinction between God’s eternal life and temporal things must be maintained in order to honor God’s divinity, then, for Luther, the supper as enacted gospel or gift is lost. What was at stake for Luther in the theology of the sacrament is to understand the supper as an assurance and a promise that God is mercifully present for contrite sinners “in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine. For this reason, Luther taught the manducatio indignorum, the sacramental communion of even unbelievers with Christ, and the manducatio oralis, that one receives Christ by means of the act of eating and not merely as a “spiritual” exercise. In Luther’s perspective, Zwingli’s position compromises the integrity of the sacrament as promise. For instance, Zwingli’s alloiosis doctrine, which teaches that the elements only signify a Christ whose literal presence is in heaven, understood as a particular locus, and not on earth, undermines the sacrament’s ability to console troubled consciences. From Luther’s perspective, Zwingli’s doctrine could be construed as expecting or requiring Christians to heighten their own spiritual awareness in order to find and to commune with Christ in the supper. For Luther, Zwingli’s view undermines the sacrament as gift; heaven is wherever heaven’s gifts are offered. This dispute is relevant to Hegel since the Lord’s Supper can offer a test case for his view of the “identity of identity and difference.” In the Lutheran view, the elements literally convey Christ’s body and blood, which as glorified by Christ’s resurrection body are capable of ubiquity. However, Hegel’s overall view of the Lord’s Supper has a somewhat Calvinistic twinge, when compared to Lutheran orthodoxy.44 For instance, Hegel ignores the manducatio imporium, and downplays the manducatio oralis. He emphasizes communion as primarily a “spiritual” communion, far more reminiscent of Calvin’s view than Luther’s.45 43 For a readable Lutheran perspective on this debate, see Carl E. Braaten’s Principles of Lutheran Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 89–96; for a concise, ecumenical perspective, see Alister McGrath’s Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 165– 176. 44 The dispute over the “real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper was a living issue in Hegel’s milieu, since the doctrine was under review due to the union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches which was decreed by the Prussian king during Hegel’s residence in Berlin. While Hegel claimed a Lutheran position with regard to the Lord’s Supper, his stance seems to lose the objectivity of Christ’s presence in the Supper, a position crucial to Luther and confessional Lutheranism. Indeed, in his 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3, 337, Hegel states of the sacrament, “It is a question precisely of the conscious presence of God, of unity with God, the unio mystica, [one’s] self-feeling of God, the feeling of God’s immediate presence within the subject.” 45 Calvin emphasizes that the sacrament is a visible sign of Christ’s “secret union” with the believer (Institutes IV.xvii.1); hence, he states, “from the physical things set forth in the Sacrament we are led by a sort of analogy to spiritual things. Thus, when bread is given as a

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

55

Nevertheless, he is anxious to affirm a genuine Lutheran view of the supper, that earthly things can actually convey a spiritual Christ, in opposition to either a Roman Catholic or a Reformed view. Akin to Hegel’s attempt to formulate a “scientific” outlook on the infinite is the Lutheran insight from sacramental theology that the finite is capable of bearing the infinite. This insight is more than a socially acceptable warrant for his thinking, as Cyril O’Regan maintains. It provides the spiritual climate congenial to his attempt to ground Boehme’s mystical insights into ultimate reality in a scientific or intelligible way. However, he transformed the Lutheran capax doctrine notion radically by transmuting it into a speculative notion that if the finite can convey the infinite, then the infinite is capable of being comprehended in and through the finite. In other words, he has reconceived the infinite in such a way that it is dependent upon the finite for life and concrete realization and it is not just the finite that is dependent upon the infinite, as is suggested in traditional theology, including Lutheran theology. Hegel’s phenomenology offered his demonstration that the infinite and the finite can be reconciled by means of conceiving the infinite as spirit, the energy pervasive in all reality, both conscious and unconscious, whose life is the result of its ability to unify and reconcile all differences, between the ideal and the real, “through a process of absolution (releasement) and resolution (reintegration).”46 Hegel claimed that the truth of his project can be demonstrated by his ability to portray spirit as the reality of every form of consciousness, from the most simple or “abstract” (as Hegel would say), to the most rich, inclusive, and variegated form of spirit, God’s own self-consciousness. The truth, then, is actual only as a system, a coherent, “scientific,” account of its own growth and development. The phenomenology is indeed a kind of Bildungsroman, a story of character growth,47 an account of the divine life growing towards maturation and seeking authentic self-expression. Hegel will demonstrate, from his Boehmian perspective, that spirit “sets up opposition and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its antithesis.”48 What drives spirit on its path is its goal or telos (following Aristotle’s view of movement as potentiality actualizing itself) towards self-fulfillment, its own self-understanding. symbol of Christ’s body, we must at once grasp this comparison: as bread nourishes, sustains, and keeps the life of our body, so Christ’s body is the only food to invigorate and enliven our soul. When we see wine set forth as a symbol of blood, we must reflect on the benefits which wine imparts to the body, and so realize that the same are spiritually imparted to us by Christ’s blood. These benefits are to nourish, refresh, strengthen, and gladden” (Institutes IV.xvii.3). Hegel offers his reflections on the Lord’s Supper in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), vol. 3, 337–339. 46 This phrasing I am adopting from Peter Hodgson’s introductory comments to the Phenomenology in his G.W.F. Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 92. 47 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 [Phänomenologie, 11]. 48 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 10 [Phänomenologie, 18].

56

Mark Mattes

The concept of “Good Friday” (die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes) 49 returns in the Phenomenology. Perhaps, Hegel’s Lutheran background led him to honor Good Friday as the significant event in the church year that witnesses to God’s self-emptying expression of love, God’s kenotic self-giving and self-divestment for the sake of humanity. As mentioned, Hegel interprets Good Friday in a “speculative” way which on the one hand helps us understand the secularization of European intellectual life both as a positive religious movement and as a metaphor for the importance of negation, indeed, death, as the determinate negation that helps spirit process through its various life-forms on the way to its telos. This latter perspective he terms “the Calvary of Absolute Spirit” in the Phenomenology. Indeed, the activity of “understanding,” unlike that of speculative reason, is the force that kills pretentious forms of consciousness that would falsely claim to convey reality in all its fullness and yet actually fail to do this. For Hegel, the life of spirit is heroic in the sense that it does not shun this experience of negation. Indeed, spirit wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and tarrying with it. This tarrying with it is the magical power that converts it (the negative) into being.50

God, conceived of as absolute spirit, is not outside this process—indeed a “magical” one—of determinate negation. In fact, God’s achievement of the divine life is entirely indebted to this process. The whole’s or the infinite’s very urge for self-fulfillment is entirely at the expense of its constitutive members; consciousness “thus suffers this violence at its own hands.”51 Hence, any given finite aspect of reality is a potential victim for the sake of the life of the whole. There is no external agent who can deliver these parts from the violent outworkings of the whole. Hegel believed that his unique contribution to metaphysics was to incorporate death as a servant of life. Indeed, death must be incorporated in some way or other into the life of the whole, if it is not to stand outside the realm of intelligibility. Hegel’s genius, then, is to reconceive death as itself the provocateur of spirit’s native, indeed “magical,” self-rejuvenating, self-resurrecting potential. In light of his understanding of determinate negation, manifest especially at Calvary, as the magic that can help fuel the progression of spirit, Hegel reinterpreted Christianity as the “revelatory religion” (offenbare Religion) in which spirit can come to self-consciousness of itself, but only in a metaphorical or 49 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 493 [Phänomenologie, 434]. 50 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 19 [Phänomenologie, 27]. 51 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 51 [Phänomenologie, 57].

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

57

“representational,” that is, unscientific, manner.52 The Christian faith thus has the true content of ultimate truth, but lacks the true form. For Hegel this is no denigration of religion. After all, philosophy is dependent on religion in a way that religion is not dependent on philosophy. Religion offers the correct Vorstellung or image of philosophical truth. What it lacks is the rigor of philosophical thinking, the Begriff, with its ability to show the interconnectedness of all conscious reality by means of specifying the relationships amongst various determinate negations. However, the method of the phenomenology requires a speculative interpretation of the Christian faith. In a speculative perspective, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth should be seen not as the resuscitation of an individual dead man, but as the basis for the creation of a community of spirit, the “universalization” of Jesus’ individual self-consciousness into that of a wider communal or ecclesial self-consciousness, that of the Christian community. As Hegel phrases this truth: “Death is transfigured from what it immediately signifies, the nonbeing of this individual, into the universality of the spirit, which lives in its community, dies there daily and daily rises again.”53 Hegel’s understanding of the community as undergoing daily death and resurrection seems to be directly indebted to Luther’s understanding of the sacrament of baptism, which according to the Small Catechism, is seen as a daily drowning of the “old Adam” and the eschatological miracle of God’s raising the new person of faith each day.54 Of course, Hegel transmuted the eschatological dimension of Luther’s understanding of the Christian life by translating the reality of the individual Christian’s transitus into the scheme of the outworking of absolute spirit’s journey of self-discovery in and through Christians. For Hegel, in sharp contrast to Luther, death is tamed. Death is not God’s “alien work,” the eschatological end of the “old Adam” as the prerequisite of a new humanity who lives by faith, as it was for Luther. Rather, death serves as a means for fueling the progression of spirit. For Luther, death can serve God’s purposes—not because God needs it for God’s own self-development—but only as an “alien work,” which presupposes God’s “proper work” of recreating life anew, since faith can allow humans to be 52 What Hegel calls “picture-thinking”; Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 412 [Phänomenologie, 365]. 53 Here I am following Hodgson’s translation, see G.W.F. Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit, 134 (Miller trans., 475) [Phänomenologie, 418]. 54 Hence, Luther writes of the significance of water in baptism: “It signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil lusts, should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and the new man should come forth daily and rise up, cleansed and righteous, to live forever in God’s presence.” See The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. and ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), 349:12 [Die bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952), ed. Hans Lietzmann, Heinrich Bornkamm, Hans Volz, and Ernst Wolf, 516:30].

58

Mark Mattes

able to be conformed to the image of the crucified as they learn to rely on God in those very life experiences that surpass their ability to control. As we have seen, Hegel associated the “death of God” in Jesus’ death with the ending of a false view of God where God is perceived as transcendent to and independent of the world, permitting a new view of God to emerge. This new view of God sees God as spirit, wholly immanent within the world of nature and human destiny, a door for a new secular spirituality opened by modernity. Some recent Hegel interpreters have argued that Hegel’s philosophical theology is best seen not as pantheism (akin to Spinoza’s), nor atheism, but as panentheism,55 in which God is wholly immanent within the world, but not reducible to the world. This view may in fact be the best model for understanding Hegel’s view of the divine. It is clear, however, that for Hegel “God-talk” properly should be translated into “spirit-talk,” at least for those who wish to engage in thinking beyond a “representational” mode of understanding religious truth and gain philosophical clarity and rigor in their thinking. With the completion of the Phenomenology Hegel believed that he had demonstrated the kind of scientific rigor with regard to the absolute that philosophy demands. Much of the rest of Hegel’s work will be to show how this “scientific” approach can be applied to other philosophical and extra-philosophical disciplines.56

55 See Raymond Williamson, An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1984), 231–294. 56 For instance, the Science of Logic [(1812–1816), trans. A.V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), 50] offered a presentation of a formal, abstract ontology or, as Hegel puts it, as an “exposition of God in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and finite mind.” Hegel now assumed a kind of transparency between the divine and the human minds, since they share a common life. His view of logic, like phenomenology, was based on a process of determinate negation. Only the whole system of truth can be immortal or deathless; it alone is not subject to death because it is not discrepant with regard to its intended truth. The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences [trans. William Wallace, 3rd edition, Logic (1975), Philosophy of Nature (1970), Philosophy of Mind (1971) Oxford: Oxford University Press], for example, showed how knowledge is shared between God and people in pure thought (the logic), the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit as the development of social interactions. In the Philosophy of History [trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956)] Hegel saw history as a progress in the consciousness of freedom, including and especially that of the selfdetermination of absolute spirit. Of course, the destiny of spirit for attaining freedom is the same destiny of humanity. Both the divine and the human become free in and through the other. Hence, the theme of death as tamed for the service of the self-discovery of spirit is repeated under the guise of history seen as a “slaughter bench.”

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

59

Hegel’s Lutheran Claim against Schleiermacher It is with his “Foreword to Hinrich’s Religion” (1822) 57 and his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1821, 1824, 1827, 1831) that Hegel examined the Lutheran roots of his thinking in a new, somewhat different light. As we have seen, Hegel inappropriately used the Lutheran Christological affirmation of the finitum capax infiniti as a springboard to argue for the intelligibility of all reality, the infinite as well as the finite. This move was crucial for his attempt to develop a “scientific” approach to the absolute and overcome the bifurcations that both Kant and Lessing had left for philosophy by translating philosophy into a new key, that of the life-history of absolute spirit. By the time of these two writings, however, Hegel was dealing with a new adversary, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Unlike Hegel, Schleiermacher was less concerned to overcome Kant’s and Lessing’s bifurcations. He sought, by contrast, to defend religion in the face of modern criticisms by relocating it in relation to ethics and metaphysics in light of Kant’s thinking. For Schleiermacher, religious experience is to be found not on the basis of ethics, a “doing,” as it was for Kant and some deists, or in metaphysics, a “knowing,” as it was for many Enlightenment rational theologians (and, perhaps, by extension for Hegel), but in a “feeling,” specifically “feeling of absolute dependence.”58 This pre-reflective, “limit experience,” said to be available to all, can be reached by the criteria of seeking the “whence” of one’s existence. While Schleiermacher clearly offers an ingenious apologetic for religious experience, one that continues to be powerfully influential to this very day, Hegel was troubled by this move. Hegel certainly did not accept Schleiermacher’s notion of feeling as a basis for interpreting the phenomenon of religion and linking religion to the ultimate. For Hegel, feeling could only be understood as a form of sensibility, an indeterminate, sense-based phenomena without any determinate content. Hegel maintained that feeling needs thinking if it is to establish itself within consciousness. Furthermore, Hegel worried that Schleiermachers approach undermined the human ability to formulate truth-claims about God. Schleiermacher maintained a kind of agnosticism towards specific attributions of the divine, if they are held independent of human interpretations of religious experience, since on the basis of the feeling of absolute dependence the divine is not by any means transparent to us. The task of theology for Schleiermacher is to interpret how the Christian faith understands itself in re-

57 See G.W.F. Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit, ed. Peter Hodgson, 155–171 [“Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosophie” in “Vermischte Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit,” vol. 20, ed. Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: Frommanns Verlag, 1958)]. 58 See F.D.E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 2–12.

60

Mark Mattes

lation to the feeling of absolute dependence; theology does not describe God from the inside out. Hegel charged that Schleiermacher undermined the genuine significance of freedom for humankind’s destiny. For Hegel, one cannot be free apart from thinking. For Hegel, the fact that Schleiermacher sees feeling and not thinking as the proper horizon in which to discern the divine in human life ultimately limits the horizon of human self-determination or freedom. Hence, Hegel took his famous cut at Schleiermacher with the accusation that if the “feeling of absolute dependence” is the source of religious disposition, “a dog would then be the best Christian, for the dog carries this feeling most strongly within itself, and its life is spent primarily in it.”59 In contrast, Hegel argued that “spirit finds liberation, and the feeling of its divine freedom, rather in religion. Only free spirit has, and can have religion.”60 It is for this reason that Hegel argued that the truly religious person senses himself or herself to be reborn: “free spirit exists only as a reborn spirit.”61 One can only become reborn by serious reflection on the significance of life, a task suitable for mature adults and neither little children nor animals. Quite un-Lutheran, Hegel thus saw little place for baptismal regeneration.62 Again, somewhat Calvinistically, Hegel argues that “faith essentially needs the testimony of the indwelling spirit of truth and must have been implanted in one’s own heart.”63 This testimony of the spirit is a different emphasis from Luther’s view of the eternal word (verbum externum), as the authoritative voice for the believer’s assurance about his or her relationship to God. Nevertheless, one must consider that Hegel looked to Luther as an inaugurator of freedom, as a champion (in deference to Kantian autonomy) against purely external authority. Hegel would eventually herald Luther as akin to Socrates in his ability to stand against the state when it is not properly grounded in a scientific spirit.64 Hegel appealed to this outlook on Luther against Schleiermacher’s philosophy of religion.

59 60 61 62

Hegel, “Foreword to Hinrich’s Religion,” 166 [Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosophie, 19]. Hegel, “Foreword to Hinrich’s Religion,” 166 [Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosphie, 20]. Hegel, “Foreword to Hinrich’s Religion,” 157 [Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosophie, 5]. See his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1824), 233–34 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, vol. 5, part 3 “Die vollendete Religion,” ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1984), 164] where Hegel emphasizes that it is teaching (not baptism) that helps effectuate a rebirth. 63 Hegel, “Foreword to Hinrich’s Religion,” 169 [Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosophie, 24]. Hegel’s words are “Zeugnisses von dem in wohnenden Geiste der Wahrheit.” See Calvin’s Institutes III.i.1 for Calvin’s emphases on the importance of the “inner witness” of the Spirit for the believer’s assurance of faith. 64 See his “Rede bei der dritten Säkular-Feier der Uebergabe der Augsburgischen Konfession,”a public lecture addressed to the University of Berlin) June 25, 1830, in “Vermischte Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit,” vol. 27, ed. Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart, Frommanns Verlag, 1958), 532.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

61

In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel, in contradistinction to rationalistic deists and Schleiermacher’s romantic approach to theology, affirmed the rich plethora of doctrine in Christian creedal orthodoxy. In his own way, he believed that he was a champion of Christian truth claims, because unlike the rationalists, he appealed to particular Christian doctrines, such as the trinity, since he saw these as potentially manifesting truth about the divine, though in “picture language,” merely interpretations of Christian experience. Hence, Hegel claimed that the problem with modern rational theologies and Schleiermacher’s approach is that they offer only abstractions, a vacuum of “the beyond.”65 They are inwardly empty and dead. In this regard, Hegel affirmed that the philosophy of religion is infinitely closer to positive (heterogeneous) doctrine of orthodox Christianity.66 Again, Hegel reinterpreted orthodoxy in a markedly heterodox way so as to accentuate an ontological continuum between the finite and the infinite. The philosophy of religion indicates that God is essentially rational and that the human as rational is able to think God, even on God’s own terms. Hence the Christian view of God can be reinterpreted such that “Spirit, insofar as it is called divine spirit, is not a spirit beyond the stars or beyond the world; for God is present, is omnipresent, and strictly as spirit is God present in spirit.”67 Hegel appealed to his revisionist Lutheran claim—his unique (and illicit) reading of the capax doctrine—against Schleiermacher with two rounds: (1) the Christian God is inherently intelligible and is to be found properly in reason and not feeling and (2) the truth of religion for the human is to liberate the human, allow the human to become free, and this can happen only to the degree that human reason, and not mere feeling, is unleashed in human social relations.

Deipassionism, Freedom, Spirit Hegel’s proposed Lutheran claim unfolds in three of his most important philosophical contributions: deipassionism, freedom, and spirit. First, death, as we have seen, is a central philosophical category for Hegel. In part, Hegel’s making the theme of death as the central dynamic for process or movement in his system is due to Luther’s theology of the cross. While for Luther the cross is an experiential, total, and final event, not only for Christ but also for the believer (or more 65 Georg Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1824), vol. 1, 126 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, part 1 “Der Begriff der Religion,” vol. 3, ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983), 42]. 66 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 129 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, part 1, 45]. 67 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 130 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, part 1, 46].

62

Mark Mattes

properly the unbeliever in the believer), Hegel reinterprets the cross as a metaphor for negation in the dynamics of the life of absolute spirit. For Hegel, there is no final opposition between life and death. Indeed, death is a necessary feature of life, if life is to be renewed. Death as determinate negation creates the possibility that all reality is intelligible and that the infinite is potentially transparent, since we can understand the reasons why any given self-expression of spirit falls short of ultimacy and thus dies. Hegel also appeals to a “kenotic”68 dimension to absolute spirit. Absolute spirit has “emptied” itself, “divested” itself (Entäussung, entäussertes) of a life untroubled by finitude in order to achieve a concrete and dynamic life. This kenotic dimension of spirit is implied in Hegel’s Lutheran claim, since Lutheranism, in distinction to the Reformed position, has emphasized that there is no reserve in the Logos that was not incarnate in Jesus Christ, the so-called “infra-Lutheranum”69 in contra-distinction to the Reformed supposition that there is a reserve of the Logos not incarnate in Jesus Christ. This approach to the Logos offers the potential for a theory of deipassionism that some infer from the Lutheran supposition and that the Reformed theologians historically were decisively seeking to preserve themselves from.70 Hegel would interpret the kenotic activity of the infinite as the infinite’s seeking concretization. Hegel was seeking to fill the void that Kant’s view of the noumenal (reality as such) suggests. If, as Hegel has suggested, the finite bears the infinite as the modes of the infinite’s self-realization and self-embodiment, then death is given meaning from the perspective of the absolute. Death helps the absolute move toward its goal of self-determination or freedom. Indeed, history is the outworking of this movement. Death is not external to the divine, since it helps the divine achieve its fullness of life. Indeed, death is a crucial factor for the divine. Death is justified if in fact it leads to freedom. What is remarkable, if not indeed miraculous for Hegel, is that the system is ever regenerative; it has sufficient resources to heal its every wound and generate life anew, all from within its own life. For Hegel, talk of God’s death is either to emphasize the triumph of modern 68 See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 453 [Phänomenologie, 400]. 69 See Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology, 94, where the Lutheran infra-Lutheranum is defined as the position that “the Son of God is totally within the flesh and never outside it (negque logos extra carnem, neque caro extra logon).” This teaching is constructed in opposition to the Reformed position which construes the Godhead as incomprehensible and omnipresent is beyond the bounds of the humanity which it has assumed, though remaining personally united with it. 70 Commenting on Luther’s “Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper” (1528) in Luther’s Works, American Edition (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 37:210 [Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus), 26:321], Paul Fiddes notes that “Luther… had protested against a merely verbal communicatio idiomatum, speaking of ‘the death of God’, but with the explanation that while God suffered in the incarnation he could not suffer in his eternal nature.” See his The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 29.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

63

secularism over traditional beliefs in God or a speculative ploy to show how spirit is wholly internal to, yet able to transcend, nature and human life. It is not, as it was for Luther, the promise of God’s work to claim sinners as God’s own in Christ’s death. Second, freedom is the goal of the absolute. Hegel’s notion of freedom is indebted to Kant. He thought, however, that Kant was inaccurate in assuming that feelings, desires, and urges are a threat to autonomy. For Hegel, a person is free if and only if he or she is independent and self-determining and not determined by or dependent on something other than himself or herself. This autonomy can be attained as agents take ownership of their feelings, desires, and urges. This view is true not only for the individual, but also for all reality. Freedom, ultimately understood as embodied in a political community for Hegel, implies that all “otherness,” all that is “not-self” is internalized into the life of the whole. As long as otherness is external to the whole, then the whole cannot truly be self-determining. Hegel offers several ways in which the self can identify with the other. First, the self can make the other less alien: one can seek to reform a society, for example, that one is displeased with. Second, one can discover that the other is not wholly other; science, for instance, helps us understand the universe as intelligible, akin to the workings of our own minds. Finally, one can enhance the affinity of the other to the self by revealing the reasons behind the outworkings of the other.71 Even God is not other for Hegel, but the urge for the self-fulfillment of the whole. History is the forum in which the absolute exercises its freedom. Indeed, apart from such specific concretization as actual events in history, the absolute could never be free or autonomous, because it would not be able to internalize otherness within history. Here, as we have seen, Hegel’s view of freedom reconciles the contingent truths of history with the eternal truths of reason. In this regard, Walter Kaufman has suggested that Hegel “spiritualized” the Enlightenment and “intellectualized” Romanticism.72 For Hegel the Enlightenment’s fixation on reason was abstract and needs life or concrete actuality. Romanticism’s focus on contingent realities—the “noble savage,” one’s private feelings, the splendor and brutality of the medieval and ancient worlds, the irrational, and the macabre—needs schematization on the basis of where each might fit within the whole. Hegel’s view of death as the end of alienation or otherness is crucial to his view of freedom. His expectation of and hope for a political community that would embody a philosophical spirit in its folk-life is likewise an implication of his view of freedom. As noted, Hegel attributed the origins of freedom in the modern era to Luther. In that perspective, Luther

71 See Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary, 112. 72 See “The Young Hegel and Religion” in MacIntyre, Hegel, 73.

64

Mark Mattes

opened the door for the quest for subjectivity that helped give birth to the modern world. Third, absolute spirit is the goal of all reality and the chain that links all experiences, from the simplest and most elementary, to the most rich and grand. Hegel solves the problem of how the finite is capable of bearing the infinite with his notion of spirit. The finite concretizes the infinite; the infinite gives destiny and meaning to the finite. Spirit is the continuity as the very life-energy, the urge to actualize a certain telos, amongst all things, despite the fact that this continuity is constituted by discontinuity, the death of inadequate expressions of the whole. From the perspective of spirit, God and humanity are not alien to one another; there is no irreconcilable separateness between uncreated and created being. Spirit is wholly immanent in and through all things, ever regenerative over death. Spirit is best seen as not a substratum, but an activity that develops in stages and takes over what is other than itself both cognitively and practically, in nature and lower levels of experience, through which it realizes itself. History, for Hegel, is the development of spirit in time, the economy of the life of God. The Christian doctrine of the economic trinity, an important category for Hegel, is reinterpreted in light of spirit. The trinity is most properly itself when conceived of by means of the economy of salvation as spirit, as goal, as self-unfolding, as revealing itself to itself in history.73 These notions would be quite foreign to the Nicene fathers and Luther, who helped codify ancient Christian teachings on the soteriological basis of affirming the full divinity and humanity of Christ, and not on the basis of speculating on the relationship between God and history.

Conclusion: Luther Contra Hegel Lutheranism provided important Christological and theological themes that Hegel would reinterpret in light of Boehme and prior authors to show that the infinite is intelligible because finite human minds and the infinite both share a common reason. However, in most respects, Luther and Hegel are more different than similar. It is true, as Asendorf maintains, both tend to be dialectical thinkers and that this pattern of theological inquiry can be helpful for contemporary theology. However, and most obviously, it is difficult, if not impossible to understand Hegel’s view of the divine as capable of being gracious and merciful.74 According to Eberhard Jüngel, Luther’s greatest contribution to the history of 73 See O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 73 and Dale Schlitt, Hegel’s Trinitarian Claim (Leiden: Brill, 1984). 74 See Taylor’s Hegel, 493. The word “grace” however is not wholly absent from Hegel’s vocabulary. See Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1824), 235.

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

65

theology is to establish and clarify the proper difference or distinction between God and humanity.75 For Luther, the supposition of an ontological continuum as Hegel supposed between God and humanity or the infinite and the finite is an illusion. According to Luther, “Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.”76 The problem with humans for Luther is the inability to accept finitude, or creatureliness. Either by means of piety or worldliness humans seek to divinize or immortalize themselves. Driven by their anxiety over their seeming insignificance and eventual death, they seek to barricade themselves from these threats of death and triviality. Luther points out that at a fundamental level one needs to learn to accept one’s humanity as a creature of God and not as a controller of one’s destiny. Only in this way can humans become free from their own ambition to control their fate, and thus open themselves to the future, to the needs of their neighbors, and to the prospect of good stewardship of the planet. In this regard, Calvary ought not to be made “speculative” as Hegel does. For Luther, death can never be tamed into a system that promotes its own selfactualization. For Luther, the death of Christ is tantamount to the death of humanity-as-sinful. As God’s judgment, the death of Christ renders humanity totally passive and thus discloses the truth that at the most fundamental level, to be human is to be receptive, and not active. Death, then, is God’s “alien work” by which God recreates a new world of men and women who live by faith. Only God, who is external to any human system, can eschatologically raise the dead. Thus, there is no positive synthesis between God and the old humanity. Indeed, in Christ’s death the old person within dies. While Hegel’s panentheistic, idealistic philosophy as a whole is, for most thinkers, no longer a living option for either contemporary metaphysics or epistemology, his thinking remains influential and provides an interesting test case for how Luther’s thinking was appropriated by a leader of an important era of modernity, German Idealism. Hegel’s appropriation of Luther was overshadowed by his commitment to the metaphysical speculations of Jacob Boehme. Nevertheless, his reading of Luther suggested a path—the Christological capax doctrine—which he misinterpreted as a general anthropological principle by which to establish a “scientific” approach in order to reconcile the finite and the infinite. Hegel’s view of the absolute, however, is fundamentally incompatible with such Lutheran distinctives as grace, faith, and the distinction between God and the world, and person and works. Properly understood, for Luther, the human most fundamentally is not a vehicle of the divine but a 75 See Eberhard Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy Harrisville (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 24–25. 76 See Martin Luther, “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology” in Luther’s Works, 31:10.

66

Mark Mattes

potential receiver of divine judgment and favor; and this view of the human should be accentuated in today’s world which, due to humanity’s overly zealous attempts at self-security, is currently being exploited by unlimited technological development.

Anders Holm

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

From the nineteenth century onwards, two Danes have won international fame: Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen. However, their impact on Danish society is surpassed by a third Dane, the mythologist, priest, historian, public educator, and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872).1 He was also a politician and one of the Founding Fathers of the Constitution. In all these areas, his extensive writings and his public ministry have profoundly influenced the Lutheran Church and Danish society right up to today. It is therefore no exaggeration to regard him as a second reformer after Luther in Denmark. In most of what he did, he also saw his ideological project as a continuation of the work of Luther. He was, however, often critical of Luther and the Reformation. His purpose was to draw the right contemporary consequences of the Reformation. In fact, one of Grundtvig’s major points was that in order to maintain the heritage of the Reformation, one must remain critical of its theological and practical outcomes. After offering a brief biography, this essay sheds light upon Grundtvig’s theological and ecclesial thinking in three ways, firstly, by examining Grundtvig’s view of the church; secondly, by looking at some of his central treatises in order to show the theological and political outcome of this perspective; and thirdly, by showing how Grundtvig unfolds his theology practically in his hymns.

Biography Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig was born on September 8, 1783, in a rectory in the village of Udby, one day’s travel by foot from Copenhagen. He was the youngest of seven children. His father, Johan Grundtvig, was a conservative pious Orthodox Lutheran pastor who was well respected for his work in the church and 1 Although for most non-Danes Grundtvig is an unfamiliar name, his ideas still turn up in surprising international contexts, not least as an inspiration for various adult education programs around the world.

68

Anders Holm

for authoring a few books, particularly a commentary on Luther’s Small Catechism. Already as a child, Grundtvig started to take interest in history and theology. He read day and night in his father’s book collection. Even though it is difficult to know what he picked up as a little boy, he was no doubt influenced early on by these activities. These interests continued when, already at the age of nine, he was sent far away to a family friend in Jutland for preparation for high school. After two years there, he moved to Copenhagen and studied theology at the university, where he was influenced by the modern Enlightenment, which emphasized Jesus’ moral teachings and the supremacy of human reason. In these years Grundtvig made a clean break with the old-fashioned Lutheran Christianity of his background. However, in his diaries from the period he admits that he did not study especially hard at the university and was not very excited about anything academic. Even the powerful philosophy lectures by his older cousin, Henrik Steffens, failed to interest him, even though they are credited with sparking the hotbed of the Romantic Movement in Denmark and even though Grundtvig later changed his mind about what he had heard from Steffens. At the age of nineteen, Grundtvig left the university with a degree in theology. For a couple of years he stayed with family and friends in Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully tried to become an author and poet. In the spring of 1805, he took a job as tutor of a seven-year-old boy, at a manor on the Danish island of Langeland. This experience turned his life upside down when he fell secretly in love with the boy’s mother, the twenty-eight-year-old Constance Steensen-Leth. Probably to compensate for his powerful but unreciprocated affections he immersed himself in the Romantic literature of the time (by German writers like Herder, Fichte, and Schelling), and he started an intensive study of Nordic mythology. He also began writing and published his first major works between 1806 and 1810. In 1808 he returned to Copenhagen to work as a high school teacher of history and geography. One can hardly underestimate what Norse mythology meant to him in these years. One recent Grundtvig scholar notes that “in the young Grundtvig’s interpretation mythology is in fact a self-redeeming religious system, which renders Christianity superfluous as a force for salvation.”2 Most relevant to his later thinking and influence on Danish society was his lifelong work with the Danish and Old Norse cultural heritage. This scholarly work which he began in these years created an important foundation for his later Danish-Norse cultural program. Moreover, in connection with his work on Norse mythology and history, he established in his poetry a world of symbols and an 2 Sune Auken, Sagas spejl. Mytologi, historie og kristendom hos N.F.S. Grundtvig (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005), 46.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

69

archaic linguistic tone and style, both of which became characteristics of his writing. Although Grundtvig’s works from this period are categorized as Danish Romantic literature, they did not win as much attention from his contemporaries as they did from later readers. However, all this radically changed with a series of works in the next period of his authorship which, just like the preceding one, began with his experience of a crisis of conscience and worldview that was followed by a spiritual breakthrough. The crisis is much discussed in Grundtvig research, but it arose presumably because after some years in what he later called his “mythological intoxication” he found it difficult to bring his life views into harmony with any serious theological thinking and his Christian background. The external reason that caused Grundtvig’s crisis was his father’s summons in early 1810 to come home to Udby to serve as his curate. Split between the dream of a future in Copenhagen as an author and the duty to his aging father back in the country, he eventually chose the latter. To qualify as a pastor, he had to give a probationary sermon, which he entitled “Why has the Word of the Lord Disappeared from His House?” Although he passed the exam with honours, he caused a controversy with the provocative content of the sermon, in which he had accused his contemporary pastors of not preaching the Christian gospel. In fact, Grundtvig was very much in doubt about his own faith with the prospect of his becoming a pastor, so much so that in December 1810 he suffered a nervous breakdown. Some of his friends helped him back to his parents’ house in Udby, where he spent three months recovering. Finally, on June 16, 1811, he pastored his first service there. The crisis of 1810–11 had meant a kind of conversion experience for him. He retained his new historic way of thinking but transferred it from the mythology of the North to the history of Christianity. With the significant publication of the period, his Short Conception of the World Chronicle Considered in its Continuity (1812),3 he presented the history of the world as God’s plan for humanity—using the Bible as his point of reference. For this project he received limited support. His personal attack on the contemporary church and its clergy, as well as his fanatical preaching style naturally did not help his cause. In fact, a number of leading figures of the day regarded him as eccentric and rejected his Bible-based view of history. All in all, his views stood out as conservative compared to the biblical exegesis of his contemporaries. But Grundtvig stuck to his guns. The world in the past and the future was, as Martin Luther had claimed, based on a faithful understanding the Bible. This, however, had serious consequences. In the period after the publication he became more and more isolated. When his father died in 1813, Grundtvig 3 N.F.S. Grundtvig, Kort Begreb af Verdens Krønike i Sammenhæng (Copenhagen: Andreas Seidelins Forlag, 1812).

70

Anders Holm

returned to Copenhagen and unsuccessfully tried to become a pastor. After having waited two years in vain, in late 1815 he gave up the search and decided to concentrate on his writing career. The following three years he single-handedly published the quarterly journal Dane-Work (Danne-Virke), which contained quite a variation of genres, such as poems, translations of primary sources of history, and essays on history, literature, philosophy and mythology. But even though Grundtvig scholars today reckon his output in this journal as the beginning of many of his later activities, hardly anyone at that time, apart from himself, read what he wrote. The reason for that was undoubtedly his ongoing harsh criticism of modern thinking and his profound regrets about the weaknesses of Lutheran Christianity at the time. During this period Grundtvig simultaneously worked on and published translations of Old English poems, such as Beowulf (the first modern translation), and versions of the Nordic myths from the works of Saxo and Snorri. And while living on a little support from the king and friends, he married Lise Blicher in 1818. It was a union that produced two sons and a daughter. Without having applied for the position, Grundtvig was suddenly appointed rector of Præstø in 1821 and was transferred the following year to the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen. Again he was a parish priest, and again he had to reconsider how to navigate his nagging doubts. Standing there in front of a living congregation made him question the authority of the biblical texts that he before had so stubbornly claimed to be the heart and impetus of the church and Christianity. Was the Bible after all the center and starting point of the church? Grundtvig now slowly realised that perhaps Christianity was based on more than the Bible alone (sola scriptura), contrary to how Luther had argued. This possibility gradually redirected his worldview and, after lengthy considerations he finally found in 1825 the solution he needed in the study of the church father, Bishop Irenaeus (c. 130–200). Though the answer was a fact, it was nonetheless a big eye-opener to Grundtvig: Christianity existed before the New Testament was written. There were living, believing congregations before the gospels came into being; indeed, these congregations had helped to receive and create the faith through the work of the Holy Spirit, and the New Testament was written as a reflection of this fact.4 This realisation – which I shall return to in more detail below – has been called Grundtvig’s “matchless discovery.” But again in 1825, Grundtvig did not play his cards well. This time, in view of his matchless discovery, Grundtvig wrote a fierce attack on Professor of Theology H.N. Clausen (1793–1877), who then successfully sued him for libel. As a result 4 These realizations were to a certain extent inspired by G.E. Lessing and unthinkable without the new historical source criticism (Quellenkritik) that took its point of departure in the Enlightenment theology.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

71

Grundtvig was placed under lifelong censorship, which meant that he was not allowed to publish anything without permission. Bitterly disappointed at this turn of events, Grundtvig resigned from his job as pastor in the State Church. Gradually, however, things began to turn Grundtvig’s way. After 1825 and the libel case, the first few disciples started gathering around Grundtvig. With the king’s help, he spent the summers of 1829–31 in England, where he was inspired to work actively in the fields of education, politics, and theology. From these visits in a much more developed country, he learned the value of freedom, which became a watchword for him for the rest of his life. In the years that followed, he wrote many of his articles promoting a People’s High School and a church characterized by freedom of worship. From his visits, the possibility of making free churches outside the State Church also had come into his mind. This change in church structure was, with few exceptions, not possible in Denmark before the Constitution of 1849. But in February 1832 the first Grundtvigian congregation received permission to hold meetings in the Frederik’s Church in Copenhagen, with Grundtvig as pastor. Even though the congregation was not allowed to administer baptism or Holy Communion this was a great victory and a sign of the new times. Grundtvig’s lifelong political engagements also started in the 1830s. Although at first sceptical of democracy – fearing that it would lead to mob rule, which Grundtvig associated with the French Revolution – he slowly came to accept the move away from absolute monarchy. His censorship was lifted in 1837, and the following year his lectures on history and current events, entitled Within Living Memory (Mands Minde), drew a huge audience. In 1839 he was appointed pastor of Vartov Hospital Church, which became the basis of his numerous social and political commitments over the many years that followed. It was also during these years that Grundtvig started writing hymns to renew the Danish Church, which in 1836 celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark. For this purpose he was commissioned to produce a new hymnbook, Sangværk til den danske Kirke (Song Work for the Danish Church), for which he was relatively well paid. Again, there is no doubt about the inspiration from Luther. The assignment thus not only encouraged him to write and collect many more hymns, but it also encouraged him to see himself as a church reformer and to make the hymns relevant for the Danish Church of his day. His hymns were both of his own making and the result of revising hymns by others. All of these hymns were linked to the biblical narratives, to the Christian faith and the congregation, and to the Danish countryside and seasons. By the time of his death in 1872, he had produced 1,600 hymns. Today Grundtvig’s hymns constitute one-third of the Danish Hymnbook.5 5 A number of Grundtvig’s finest hymns have recently been translated into singable English texts in a book that contains 162 translations of Grundtvig’s hymns, songs, and poems. See

72

Anders Holm

In the winter of 1843–44, he gave another successful series of lectures, now on Greek and Nordic mythology. As with his sermons, the lecture form (followed by publication) suited his purpose and increased his popularity. It allowed him the freedom to speak his mind on all manner of subjects, including not least the promotion of the idea for a People’s High School, where all citizens, both rich and poor, could learn how to run the country as they gradually moved into positions of power. But in 1844 another depression laid him low and his hopes for a Staterun school were never realised. Again he recovered, and in 1848–49 he became a member of the Constituent Assembly that created the Danish Constitution of 1849. Thereafter, he was a member of the Lower House of Parliament for ten years and, at the ripe old age of eighty-two, he sat for six months as a member of the Upper House. Although he was listened to, his advice was rarely followed, apart from his advocacy of the individual’s right to break the parish-tie and attend another church and the right of free churches to exist within the Danish Lutheran Church structure. From 1848–51 he again single-handedly published a weekly newspaper called The Dane, in which he commented on political changes and on the unrest with Germany along the southern Danish border in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, where two of his sons were fighting. It was during these years that Grundtvig formulated his ideas of what constituted a “people”: namely, that they share a common history, a common language, and a common culture based on these two. In his imagined People’s High School, the main subjects would therefore include Danish History, Danish Geography and Folklore, Danish Poetry and Song, and Danish Law. Without this knowledge, Grundtvig was unsure whether Denmark would survive the pressure from Germany to annex the country. In the spring of 1851 Grundtvig’s wife, Lise, died after a long illness. To the consternation of some members of the public, Grundtvig remarried within ten months. His second wife, Marie Toft, was thirty years his junior. Despite another depression, Grundtvig was happily married until 1854, when complications after the birth of his new son, Frederik, ended Marie’s life. Grundtvig wrote some of his most powerful poetry about their love for one another and how her sudden death caused him untold pain. In the following years, Grundtvig wrote some of his main theological works, partly as a reaction to Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who had attacked the local clergy for not preaching the true Christianity of the New Testament. And Grundtvig married his third wife, Asta Reedtz, who was also a widow, had four children, and was not less than forty-three years his junior. In 1861, on the fiftieth Living Wellsprings. The Hymns, Songs, and Poems of N.F.S Grundtvig, trans. Edward Broadbridge (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2015).

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

73

anniversary of his work as a pastor, Grundtvig was made an honorary bishop (without a diocese) for services to the Danish Church, and from 1863 onwards, he held an annual get-together of his friends to celebrate his birthday on the eighth of September. By now he was a national monument, and his hymns and songs were becoming well-known and well-liked by many. In 1867, at the age of eighty-three, Grundtvig suffered a mental breakdown that was visible to all as he stood in the pulpit at the Vartov Church. Again he recovered, and in his final years he enjoyed the fruits of a long life. He preached right to the end, giving his last sermon on the day before his peaceful death in an armchair, five days before his eighty-ninth birthday.

Grundtvig’s View of the Church For purposes of the present essay, a key moment in Grundtvig’s life was his so called matchless discovery in 1825 and the understanding of the church that he developed as a result of this discovery.6 As mentioned, Grundtvig became a pastor again in 1821, an event that immediately had an encouraging effect on him. Nonetheless he continued to face a problem: the rationalist conception of Christianity, which he had learned in the university and which he had given up since 1805, held, according to his view, an unreasonably powerful place in the State Church in which he was now employed. For Grundtvig, the problem was not whether or not he was right in his fight with the rationalists. He felt certain that he was right. It was, on the contrary, more a concern for the sake of the laypeople and the lack of freedom of religion in the State Church. First, he was shocked that a series of religious revivals were forbidden and the revivalists’ meetings stopped by the police throughout the country (despite the fact that he never shared the revivalists’ understanding of Christianity). According to his view, they were like him in that they were more in agreement with the State Church’s official orthodox Lutheran Christianity than the rationalist theology. He felt that he and they were victims of a system in which there was no room for varying beliefs. Second, he also had to ask himself how 6 The expression “the matchless discovery” (den mageløse opdagelse) was in fact used more often by Grundtvig’s Danish contemporary, Søren Kierkegaard, than by Grundtvig himself. It was as if it had been tailor-made for Kierkegaard, who identified its ironies. The matchless discovery became for Kierkegaard the very essence of what Grundtvig stood for. However, this should not overshadow the fact that that expression is very useful when trying to grasp what Grundtvig meant when he realized something about the church had already taken place but was not articulated as important for the existence of the church. Kierkegaard was thirty years Grundtvig’s junior and knew Grundtvig’s views very well. Kierkegaard’s older brother (by eight years) became one of Grundtvig’s closest disciples.

74

Anders Holm

laypeople could actually choose between the orthodox biblical faith and the rationalist critical twisting of the Bible’s message. Grundtvig believed that they couldn’t and that they were left with a fundamental uncertainty about what true Christianity was. Against this background, he began to search for answers, as he himself later described it. If the Bible was the strongest “testimony” to true Christianity and if even its truth was open to dispute in a post-Enlightenment world, where was he to look for irreproachable validation? The breakthrough came, he wrote later, in a blessed moment when he realized “that the matchless testimony which I so industriously sought in the entire world of spirit, resonated like a voice from heaven through time and Christianity in the Apostolic Creed at Baptism.”7 Grundtvig’s point was that God had been present in his church from the beginning, and especially in the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist in which Jesus’ own words were repeated long before they were written down. Thus, Grundtvig realised that the oral tradition had existed before the written one.8 This discovery had great importance for all of Grundtvig’s later thoughts. He had discovered that the uniting point between all Christians through the ages was not the Bible but rather the fact that Christians at baptism said “yes” to enter into the history of salvation that the Apostles’ Creed articulated. One had to regard this testimony of Christianity in history as a living, true connection, which existed a priori to any speculative consideration of what Christianity was. In this connection, Grundtvig saw it as crucially important that baptism and the Creed belonged together. This did not mean – as some of Grundtvig’s critics, like Søren Kierkegaard, implied – that true Christianity was a question of being able to interpret every single word of the Creed, but rather that the Creed offered a good expression for the godly gift that the individual could vaguely sense and wish to accept by being baptized. Grundtvig thus didn’t believe that baptism meant a radical conversion for the individual but rather that humans through baptism agree to enter into a reality where the threefold God acts, without being able to gain a full overview of what that meant. In that sense one could characterize Grundtvig’s theology as a theology of growth. At this point he was clearly inspired by his work with Irenaeus.

7 “at det mageløse Vidnesbyrd, jeg saa møjsommelig ledte om i hele Aandens Verden, det gjennemlød som en Himmel-Røst hele Tiden og Kristenheden i den apostoliske Tros-Bekjendelse ved Daaben” (N.F.S. Grundtvig, Udvalgte Skrifter, vols. 1–10, ed. by Holger Begtrup [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1904–1909], 10: 353). 8 The Creed, according to Grundtvig, was “the Lord’s little oral Word.” And in order to prove this, he later developed with some of his supporters the historically unsustainable theory that Jesus had handed down the Creed to his disciples, who had then passed it on to the church, where it had been spoken ever since.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

75

Grundtvig was hereby provided with a solution to his problem. It meant that scripture became secondary in the question of salvation, even though he had thoroughly defended the Lutheran heritage and the concept of sola scriptura against the modern Bible research. The New Testament, Grundtvig realized, was not a divine revelation, as he had believed, but basically just a useful historical book, which, just like other historical sources, could elucidate the Christian life of the early church. This did not mean that he refrained from conceiving of the Bible’s accounts as actually having taken place. Neither did the Bible disappear from Grundtvig’s universe. But his new insights gave him a more liberal view of when and how he could use the Bible, since he now realized that the decisive path into Christianity had to be experienced through God’s presence in the midst of the living congregation, and not through a divinely-inspired text. As his biography clearly demonstrates, throughout his life Grundtvig never kept silent about his ideas. At the same time he had little understanding that he couldn’t expect others to share his opinion at exactly the same moment he had changed his mind. This lack of understanding was more than anything problematic in the Clausen-case, which started on August 26, 1825, when Grundtvig published The Church’s Retort against Professor Theologiæ TD H.N. Clausen,9 the book that inspired the libel case. In crass terms Grundtvig had attacked what he conceived as the essence of the concept of the church in the young professor H.N. Clausen’s recently published major work, The Church Constitution, Doctrine and Ritual of Catholicism and Protestantism.10 At the same time Grundtvig set forth his own new “view of the church” (den kirkelige anskuelse). According to him, the problem with Clausen’s book was primarily its author’s concept of the church which emphasizes the advance of Protestantism over Catholicism. Deeply influenced by his teacher Friedrich Schleiermacher, Clausen claimed that while Catholicism is an ecclesial-authoritative faith, which conceives of the church as a handed-down historical-spiritual institution, Protestantism must build on the Bible alone (sola scriptura) and the interpretation of free research. In The Church’s Retort, Grundtvig rejects this concept of the Protestant church. He sees it as extremely problematic and a sign of how bad thing had developed in the Lutheran church in the centuries after the Reformation. He asks, how can one, on the one hand, want to build one’s conception of the church on a specific text and, on the other hand, claim that this text is fundamentally unclear? Such reasoning makes the Protestant church a vulnerable construction and lay people victims of 9 N.F.S. Grundtvig, Kirkens Gienmæle mod professor Theologiæ Dr. H.N. Clausen (Copenhagen: Wahlske Boghandlings Forlag, 1825). 10 H.N. Clausen, Catholicismens og Protestantismens Kirkeforfatning, Lære og Ritus (Copenhagen: Andreas Seidelin, 1825).

76

Anders Holm

the arbitrary interpretations of theologians. In a State church—which lacks freedom and where the power belongs to the rationalists—this is highly problematic. It shows that in practice the Lutheran church is at least as authoritative over the common man as the papacy it attempted to antagonize. Therefore Grundtvig in The Church’s Retort criticizes Clausen for advocating an “exegetical papacy.” In other words, Grundtvig now began to realize that modern historicalcritical exegesis had to have consequences for the way the Protestant Church understood and organized itself politically. As an alternative, Grundtvig stressed that the church had to be found in the congregation’s faith, not in scripture. This new emphasis did not signal a turn to Catholicism, as might be expected and as some of his contemporaries thought; rather, Grundtvig was criticizing the Lutheran tradition in an attempt to continue Luther’s ideas the way Grundtvig thought they had to be interpreted three hundred years later. On the one hand, he was acutely aware that in the struggle against Clausen’s rationalism he had broken with the way the Lutheran scriptural principle had been interpreted in the State Church. On the other hand, Grundtvig thought that by claiming that the church existed before scripture he was closer to Luther and the reformers than Clausen. He underlined that Luther and the reformers had claimed the priority of scripture to fight the papacy only in order to protect the true Christian church. But this fact, he felt, didn’t change his and their fundamental agreement that faith and the church are a presupposition for interpreting scripture, not the other way around. For Grundtvig the historicalcultural situation had now changed and so had the solutions needed to maintain the protection of the church.

Political and Theological Consequences of His View of the Church In 1826 and 1827 Grundtvig expanded the significances of his new views in two long treaties, “On the True Christianity” and “On the Truth of Christianity.”11 Again he contrasted modern Bible study and his own new view of the church, and again his point of departure was the laypeople. If true Christianity had merely been a contest to determine who was the best at interpreting the Biblical texts, it would be entirely improbable that common people could ever rely on anything. It is pointless to confuse Christianity with the Bible. If one wants to know what true Christianity is, one must instead turn towards the testimony in the history of the 11 N.F.S.Grundtvig, “Om den sande Christendom,” Theologisk Maanedsskrift, 4 (1826): 4–24, 97–118, 195–216; 5 (1826): 218–257. / N.F.S. Grundtvig, “Om Christendommens Sandhed,” Theologisk Maanedsskrift, 6 (1826): 18–38, 117–153, 212–244; 7 (1826): 1–30, 226–275; 8 (1827): 223–251; 9 (1827): 30–62, 97–148.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

77

church, for which the New Testament proves to be an ordinary historical source – and not some kind of magic book. The evidence is the Christians’ own faith and hope, into which Christians throughout the history of the church had been baptized. Referring clearly to the controversy between himself and Clausen, Grundtvig states that the testimony of history is what unites Christians though time in spite of various denominations and schools in Christendom. As a result of this claim in the treatise, Grundtvig introduces a division between “church” and “school” (today: “church” and “theology”), one that became increasingly significant in his thought from this point onward. In the church, he claims, there cannot be conflict. Here the unity is based exclusively on baptism and Holy Communion and the Christians’ free confession. The church is a community of believers, a life in itself. In school things are different. There, people should be able to discuss everything, even the interpretation of the Bible, without threatening the unity of the State Church. The school should have no power over the church and vice versa. By making these claims, Grundtvig had taken the first steps towards his position in church politics, which he gradually developed in years after the libel case where a public church struggle between his and Clausen’s defenders arose that lasted until the early 1830s. Some of Grundtvig’s young supporters unsuccessfully defended him and his ideas. Surprisingly, Grundtvig was rather passive in this struggle with the church. There was something odd about this whole miserable affair, he thought, which could only be due to the State Church’s decrees for compulsory law in questions of faith.12 In the years that followed, Grundtvig therefore began to change his view about the degree to which Clausen and like-minded theologians ought to withdraw from the church, as he had suggested in the Church’s Retort. The problem lay rather with the laws of the State Church, he thought, which all citizens had to obey if they wished to keep their citizenship and their legal rights. He felt that it was unreasonable to coerce faith and the conscience, when individuals had a variety of beliefs within Christianity. In extension of his sense of the relationship of faith and justice, he became aware that he himself had been wrong in the 1810s and later in 1825 when he wanted to force his version of Christianity on the world. Grundtvig now changed his mind on church politics completely. Over the years that followed, he explored in various books and articles the possibility of freedom of religion, separation of church and state, expansion of liturgical freedom and freedom of preaching, and the possibility of breaking the parish bond. From 1834 onwards, Grundtvig’s basic view on church politics was more or less cemented. It becomes clear in his major treatise, An Impartial View of the

12 Freedom of religion and the present People’s Church decree was first introduced in Denmark in the Constitution of 1849. The State Church existed until then.

78

Anders Holm

Danish State Church,13 where he favored the greatest possible freedom inside the State Church, i. e. free choice of pastor, freedom of ritual, freedom of conscience and freedom of faith. The bottom line, for Grundtvig, was that the State Church is in fact no church at all but only a civil institution that houses the true invisible church as a foreign guest. Therefore, there should be room for both the rationalists, the traditionalists, and other Christians under the same roof. A look at later developments of the Danish Church proves him prophetic. What can seem somewhat surprising is the fact that Grundtvig’s ideal model for the church-state relationship not was a total separation, as has been argued in the US, for example, even though he knew that one day this complete break could possibly be the consequence of his proposal. The main reason for that was that he wanted to avoid further division between the different church communities beyond what is necessary. As long as religious freedom was given, it was best, he thought, if all the different churches in a small country like Denmark remained within the same institution and cooperated practically and administratively. He believed that it was healthy to meet others with different worldviews under the same roof, an idea that ran counter to the way the Lutheran state churches had developed in the three centuries after the Reformation. Grundtvig doubted the development of the State Church was really what Luther had had as his intention. He thought that, in fact, Luther had not been happy with the way the new churches were organized. Most importantly, Luther, like Grundtvig, had thought that the church as an organization was something which continually had to be developed and discussed, so as to ensure that nothing stood in the way of the evolving spiritual life. In both of the treatises on true Christianity and in a number of other theological writings in the decades that followed,14 Grundtvig expanded and deepened his theology. Significantly, based on his thought about the relation between church and scripture, Grundtvig introduced another division between words and writing [Ord og Skrift], a division inspired by the writings of Paul: if Christianity in the church is true and living in contrast to the biblical text, this also must mean that there is a difference between words and writing. Previously Grundtvig had believed that scripture was God’s revealed word, but he now recognized that he was wrong; he now realized that the Bible’s letters were dead or, more correctly, only gave information about the living words in the apostles’ church. The word, by contrast, as the living word, for Grundtvig had its center in God’s own word at baptism and Holy Communion. 13 N.F.S. Grundtvig, Den Danske Stats-Kirke upartisk betragtet (Copenhagen: Paa den Wahlske Boghandels Forlag, 1834). 14 Main works: Skal den Lutherske Revolution virkelig fortsættes? (1831), Om Daabspagten (1832) and Kirkelige Oplysninger for Lutherske Christne (1840–1842).

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

79

Following Luther, Grundtvig insisted that God’s own word is present at baptism and Holy Communion by means of the Holy Spirit and in the words of institution and in the Apostles’ Creed. The living word is for Grundtvig, at the very heart of his view of the church, an expression for the communication between God and man. In the church the living God speaks to the living human being, who answers with confession and praise. Therefore, the living word is ingeniously connected with the Trinitarian understanding of history: through the Spirit of God, Christianity had propagated itself in the living word from God’s own mouth in the history of the church. From this theological point of departure, Grundtvig attempted in several places to give natural explanations of the advantage of the living oral word over the written word. On this point he was strongly inspired by Herder. The living word is preferred to the written because it better communicates the spirit [Aand]. In this connection, Grundtvig not only thought of the Holy Spirit but also of the spirit which can be in other people besides Christians. Grundtvig often argued that the spoken word is a “spiritual body,” a unity of sense and spirit. When uttered in the native language the living word is especially capable of communicating a spiritual message, Grundtvig claimed. He thought Luther agreed with him on this point, when he advocated for preaching Christianity in the native language of the people. The Holy Spirit’s connection to the local language [folketungen] is special because it is able to place itself in contact with the spirit of the people [folkeånden]. Grundtvig believed that this connection must be the meaning of the miracle of the Pentecost (Acts 2:4–11), where the Holy Spirit reproduces itself in the various languages. The maturation of Grundtvig’s theological thought to the end of the 1820s affected him in other areas of his life and work, particularly in the beginning of the 1830s, when he renewed his old interest in the ancient Norse people and their mythology but with a theoretical perspective. Now Grundtvig regarded mythology as an expression of a people’s highest spiritual ideas, but not a matter of salvation, as he saw it prior to 1810. Mythology is the ideal human representation in heathenism, which anticipates Christianity. However, precisely because it is heathen, it must be understood anthropologically and not theologically. He writes: It is neither religion nor knowledge of the world’s creation that I will learn or derive from the myths of the heathens; but it is the world historical main people’s view of human life, and what stands in connection with it, that I have the pleasure of tracing and elucidating, partly for the light that every people’s myths cast on their history and partly for the profit of witty metaphorical language that we can win from them.15 15 “Det er nemlig hverken Religion eller Beskeed om Verdens Skabelse jeg vil lære eller udlede af Hedningernes Myther; men det er Hoved-Folkenes Anskuelse af Menneske-Livet, og hvad

80

Anders Holm

The spirit of the people is what expresses the connection in every people’s essence and history; it is the characteristic feature of a people. Therefore, every people’s ancient patterns of representation and mythology have significance in the present. In this context it becomes obvious that the spirit of the people is an analogous phenomenon to the Holy Spirit, but also that it is not the same. Heathen people presuppose a collective spirit – often expressed in their mythology – which is present before Christianity, or, as it has been said not incorrectly about Grundtvig’s view, every people’s Old Testament. Grundtvig did not see any opposition between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of the people. Moreover, he held heathenism in high esteem—a change from the 1810s, arising from the fact that his matchless discovery had freed him from wanting to bring Christianity into every human expression and activity. A heathen person or a heathen people are human beings who have not yet met Christianity in the pact of baptism. This inclusive ecclesiology also gives insights into Grundtvig’s theological anthropology. In Grundtvig you find a milder view of humankind and human existence than is generally found in the Lutheran church – especially at that time. According to Grundtvig, God had originally created man in His own image, and endowed man with the ability to grow towards a greater likeness to God and Christ. At the Fall, however, humankind fell into the Devil’s violent clutches and forfeited this ability. But at baptism people turned their back on the Devil and made a new covenant with God in which they are restored to the life that they were originally created for. His inspiration for this line of thought again came from Irenaeus and was to some extent in contrast to the Lutheran tradition, especially the Lutheran Orthodoxy that Grundtvig had known since childhood. To him human beings did not become essentially otherwise in baptism; they were not reborn or created once more ex nihilo but were still the same creation, but now less under the power of sin and the power of the Devil. These are the reasons Grundtvig defended retaining the rejection of the Devil at the beginning of the Creed, as recited at baptism; by contrast, many of his contemporaries regarded this as unreasonable and out-of-date. Not least due to Grundtvig, to this day rejection of the Devil therefore remains an integral part of the baptism ritual in the Danish Lutheran Church, while the lines have been dropped from the liturgy in many other churches around the world. Grundtvig formulated many of these ideas in the major theological work Elementary Christian Teachings (1855–61), where they formed part of his discussion with Søren Kierkegaard. In an often cited passage Grundtvig stresses the continuity of the human nature before and after baptism like this: dermed staaer i Forbindelse, det fornøier mig at efterspore og oplyse, deels for det Lys, ethvert Folks Myther kaste paa deres Historie, og deels for det Udbytte af aandfulde Sind-Billeder, vi deraf kan vinde.” (Grundtvig, Udvalgte Skrifter, op. cit., 5: 535.).

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

81

…the inborn and reborn human life differ greatly … yet on the other hand it is the one and the same human life we are speaking of, with the same laws and original qualities, and the same life-energies and characteristics. So human life in its gloomiest, poorest, and impurest is nevertheless of the same kind at heart as all human life in its … purest, clearest quality. Thus, in a word, the robber on the cross shared the same human life with God’s only-begotten son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.16

Unlike many other Lutheran theologians, Grundtvig did not believe that humankind had been destroyed at the Fall, but that it had been stopped short in its growth towards perfection. He regarded baptism as the offer to return to growth in faith, hope, and love and thus closer to God and His eternal kingdom. On this point Grundtvig’s optimism fluctuated. Sometimes he wrote fervently about the closeness of the kingdom, but elsewhere, despite all growth in a Christian life on earth, he expressed doubt whether humankind could make much progress in this life. No matter what, Grundtvig believed that the framework for any Christian growth was the Christian church and its divine worship. Faith developed through baptism, hope through prayers and sermons, and love through fellowship in the Eucharist. In gratitude for these gifts, humankind responded with praise, not least in the singing of hymns, and was thereby enhanced to live life according to God’s will. Only through the fellowship of the church was it possible to envisage the Christian life, while the church as a whole gradually grew in strength, truth, and love towards the dawn of God’s kingdom. All this found best expression in his hymns.

Grundtvig’s Hymns As already mentioned, during his life Grundtvig gradually became known as a poet and hymn writer. In 1825 he had already written a multitude of hymns and poems. What was new was his certainty about what the church and Christianity were, and that this certitude provided a formula for his hymns. As a hymn-writer, Grundtvig effortlessly leaps between verse reproductions of Christianity in biblical texts, in the community’s history and present life. This has to do with Grundtvig’s understanding of the Trinity: As Father God had created 16 “… det medfødte og det gjenfødte Menneske-Liv er saa himmelvidt forskjellige … paa den anden Side er det selvsamme Menneske-Liv, vi taler om, med de samme Love og oprindelige Egenskaber, de samme Livs-Kræfter og Kjendemærker, saa at Menneske-Livet i sin allerdunkleste, sin allerfattigste og sin allerureneste Skikkelse dog i Grunden er af samme Art, som Menneske-Livet i sin …, allerreneste og allerklareske Skikkelse, saa at – for at sige alt med eet Ord – Røveren paa Korset havde det samme Menneske-Liv til fælles med Guds enbaarne Søn, Vorherre Jesus Kristus…” (N.F.S. Grundtvig, Den christelige Børnelærdom, 2. ed. [Copenhagen: K. Schønberg, 1868], 142–143).

82

Anders Holm

the world, as Son He had redeemed it by dying and rising again, and as Holy Spirit He is still active in the life of His church. Characteristic of Grundtvig’s hymns is thus the reflection that God and God’s heaven is in fact on earth, as He blesses His creation day by day through sustaining its life as His gift: We welcome with joy this blesséd day to us from the sea ascending; may heavenly light direct our way, our pleasure and profit blending! As children of light may it be seen in us that the night is ending! 17

Grundtvig is especially known as the poet of the congregation, the Holy Spirit, and Pentecost. This comes to full expression not least in his much beloved Pentecost hymn, “The sun now shines in all its splendour.” This hymn is a typical example of how Grundtvig wants to illustrate the unity of past and present in the Holy Spirit, and how he – characteristic of a Romantic – uses the Danish summer nature to do so. The summer midday sun at Pentecost is seen as the light of life or the light of mercy. During the hymn one senses his work with North mythology and how it is mixed with the biblical text. The Holy Spirit joins the national or local spirits [folkeånden] and enriches them by letting various local languages melt into one Christian language (Acts 2:1–13). As another typical tendency of Grundtvig’s hymns God himself talks with people during the communion “at the table of the Lord”; and that in the end of the hymn God’s kingdom arise in the midst of the congregation: The sun now shines in all its splendour, the light of life in mercy tender; It is the Whitsun-lily18 time, our summer gentle and sublime; and more than angels once foretold awaits in Christ a harvest gold. The Spirit comes with pow’r to stir us, the Spirit speaks and works to spur us, not of Itself but for our sake so we of love and truth partake; the Word made flesh to earth came down and rose to heav’n to wear His crown. 17 “Den signede Dag med Fryd vi ser/ af Havet til os opkomme/ den lyse paa Himlen mer og mer/ os alle til lyst og fromme!” (N.F.S. Grundtvig, Grundtvigs Sangværk 1–6, ed. Magnus Stevns et al. [Copenhagen: Det danske Forlag, 1944–64], 4: 70). The English translation here is from Living Wellsprings. The Hymns, Songs, and Poems of N.F.S Grundtvig, ed. and trans. Edward Broadbridge (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2015), 136. 18 The Whitsun-lily is the narcissus.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

83

Awake and let your amen thunder to praise redemption’s greatest wonder! Let ev’ry tongue on earth extol thank-off ’ring’s sacrificial bowl;19 around the table of the Lord rejoice, His church, with one accord! In Jesus’ name with tongues afire both Jews and Gentiles all conspire; in Jesus’ sacrificial bowl all mother-tongues melt in one whole. In Jesus’ name to God they send their alleluia without end! Our God and Father, by Your power Your kingdom’s rose is in full flower. Like suns we rise and set, at one in glory with Your only Son; for in exchange for human hearts to us Your kingdom He imparts.20

Practically Grundtvig’s universal inclusivity is also on display as he turns toward other Christian traditions. For example, the first volume of Songwork for the Danish Church from 1837,21 includes re-workings of both Lutheran, Anglican, Greek-Orthodox and Roman-Catholic hymns. Finally it should be mentioned that Grundtvig wrote his hymns in close connection with his sermons, which were his theological laboratory. In both hymns and sermons Grundtvig describes God as a God who knows human life and wishes to enrich it. Again we see Grundtvig’s firm conviction that this earthly life is not far distant from the heavenly life. This does not mean that Grundtvig in his hymns tries to shy away from death and the shadow side of life, as he has 19 The sacrificial-bowl is the communion chalice. 20 “I Al sin Glans nu straaler Solen,/ Livs–lyset over Naadesstolen,/ Nu kom vor Pinselilje-Tid,/ Nu har vi Sommer skiær og blid,/ Nu spaaer os meer end Englerøst/ I Jesu navn en Gylden Høst!// Det volder alt den Aand, som daler,/ Det virker alt den Aand, som taler,/ Ei af sig selv men os til Trøst,/ Af Kiærlighed med Sandheds Røst,/ I Ordets, navn som Her blev Kiød,/ og foer til Himmels hvid og rød!// Opvaagner alle dybe Toner/ Til Pris for Menneskets Forsoner!/ Forsamles alle Tungemaal/ I Takkesangens Offerskaal!/ Istemmer over Herrens Bord/ Nu Menighedens fulde Kor!// I Jesu Navn da Tungen gløder/Hos Hedninger saavelsom Jøder/ I Jesu-Navnets Offerskaal/ Hensmalter alle Modersmaal/ I Jesu Navn udbryder da/ Det evige Halleluja!// Vor Gud og Fader uden Lige/ Da blomstrer Rosen i dit Rige/ Som Sole vi gaae op og ned/ Idin Eenbaarnes Herlighed/ This du for hjertet, vi gav dig, Gav os med ham dit Himmerig” (N.F.S. Grundtvig: Værker i udvalg, vols. 1–10, ed. Georg Christensen and Hal Koch [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1940–1949], 10:115–117). The English translation is from Living Wellsprings, 114–115. 21 N.F.S. Grundtvig, Sang-Værk til den Danske Kirke, vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: den Wahlske Boghandels Forlag, 1837–1841).

84

Anders Holm

sometimes been accused of. But it means that he refuses to see life on earth as a miserable middle station on the way to death and as something one should long to get away from. Grundtvig loved this earthly life and feared what would come afterwards. At this point Grundtvig found his only comfort in the hope that God’s Son – who had once showed himself in human clothing, and then died and risen again from the dead –at the night of death would come and help us through to the other side: Come in the hour the last watch lies in clothing I can recognise, and sit with me in gladness, and talk to me, as friend to friend, of how we soon shall meet again and soon forget all sadness! 22

Some Conclusions and Observations When one reads Grundtvig’s writings today it is striking that many of his points are closely bound to his own time. Yet some of his different points still seem relevant in modern theological discussions. In continuation of what has been examined above the following points stand out as most significant: The matchless discovery offers a clear alternative to some of the most sterile Protestant forms of using the scriptures. By refusing to accept the Bible as a normative point of departure (norma normans) for his ecclesiology and instead by insisting on viewing it as an ordinary historical source, Grundtvig thus dissolves not only the problems connected to biblical fundamentalism in Lutheran Orthodoxy but also those connected to arbitrariness of the variety of interpretation in modern exegesis. Nevertheless, it is certainly disputable that his alternative is satisfying in all ways, not least today. We may especially question whether Grundtvig’s positive view of the Apostles’ Creed just creates a new set of problems that is now based on the use of another and shorter text than the Bible. A further, perhaps more fruitful way of understanding Grundtvig is through his insistence on God’s presence in the midst of the congregation. At this point his Trinitarian understanding of the divine service as a living dialog between God and humankind seems capable of opening up fresh perspectives on how to understand Christianity as something which is actually taking place in the present. 22 Kom i den sidste Nattevagt/ I en af mine Kiæres Dragt/ Og sæt dig ved min Side/ Og tal med mig, som Ven med Ven/ Om hvor vi snart skal ses igien/ Og glemme al vor Kvide!” (Grundtvig: Grundtvigs Sangværk 1–6, 4:125–126). The English translation is from Living Wellsprings, 149.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872)

85

It might be claimed that this is a certain way of continuing Luther’s thought of the Lord’s real presence in the service, and at the same time a unique way of: (1) understanding Pentecost; (2) insisting that faith, hope and love can actually be developed by Christians in this life; (3) claiming that God’s kingdom can be seen by those who participate in the Christian life in the congregation.

These points are formulated in Grundtvig’s treatises, but they no doubt find their clearest expression in his hymns. It is also worth noticing that Grundtvig has a milder view of human nature than is generally found in the Lutheran church and that his light judgment of heathens offers an opening to interreligious dialog or – just as important – to dialog between different worldviews which are an absolutely necessary part of the plural modern society. Finally, Grundtvig’s distinction between the church as institution and the gathering of Christians (congregatio sanctorum) seems to contain possibilities that point toward ways for modern churches to be constituted. One of the central points that Grundtvig makes out of this is that the churches as institutions do not necessarily have to split up because of internal theological disagreements. Instead it is fruitful and healthy that there is freedom so people can meet and discuss their different views under the same roof. This principle is hardly only relevant for Grundtvig’s Lutheran State Church in the nineteenth century but seems universally applicable to churches in all times and places. It is basic knowledge that talking and being together under the same roof often hinders prejudices from growing. In this way Grundtvig draws practical insight from his view of the church, which belongs not only to the past but just as much to the future.

Mark A. Seifrid

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

The Spirit communicates itself as “idea” in concrete forms. These forms appear invariably in historical oppositions which, through accommodation and change, bring forth progressive syntheses. This understanding of divine revelation in history not only represents the essence of Ferdinand Christian Baur’s thought, but also is embodied in his person and work. The Swabian father of historical criticism lived and labored between the opposing programs of rationalist philosophy and the supernaturalism of Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism. His extensive program of the history of doctrine and the church may be regarded as the attempt to establish a synthesis of these two historical forces through the accommodation of the thought of both sides. It is perhaps a bit speculative to suggest that Baur’s program (or, perhaps, programs: the philosophical and historical, in distinction) was an expression of Baur’s particular struggle.1 Yet as Baur himself observed, history without “speculation” (i. e., a philosophy of religion) is empty. It is clear, in any case, that Baur’s conception of syntheses that progressively revealed universal truth in some measure represents an expression of Baur’s particular and limited concerns. It is not at all obvious that Baur was successful in achieving the synthesis toward which he strove, the bridging of Lessing’s “ugly ditch.”2 And Baur’s idealist understanding of human history as the Spirit coming to self-understanding has long since been set aside, first through the rise of historical positivism, and then, decisively, through the trauma of the First World War. The idea that the divine purpose can be read off of history, or that history constitutes the locus of divine revelation has—for good reason—lost its appeal. Lutheran though he was, Baur was in this matter a polar opposite to Luther, whose deus absconditus could not be fathomed, and who likewise uncompromisingly in1 On this question, see the largely persuasive argument of Johannes Zachhuber, “The Absoluteness of Christianity and the Relativity of All History: Two Strands in Ferdinand Christian Baur’s Thought,” Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des frühen Christentums, WUNT 333, ed. M. Bauspiess et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 313–31. 2 Again, on this question, see Zachhuber, “The Absoluteness of Christianity.”

88

Mark A. Seifrid

sisted that God’s saving self-revelation has taken place decisively in Jesus of Nazareth—not in the ideal Christ with whom, for Baur, Jesus finally could not be identified. The lessons that one may learn from Baur in these matters are largely negative. They are, however, highly instructive. There remains, moreover, at least one abiding contribution that Baur has made to the interpretation of Scripture and therewith to theology as a whole. Critical historical investigation, properly tamed, is not an adversary to faith, but its servant. Baur’s life and career were decidedly particular, confined entirely to Swabia and especially bound to Tübingen. The oldest son of a pastor, he was born in 1792 not far from Stuttgart. In 1800 the family moved to Blaubeuren, not far from Ulm, where his father was appointed district superintendent. In 1805, at the age of thirteen, Baur entered the lower seminary located there. Through a reorganization of the educational program, two years later he was sent to Maulbronn (northwest of Stuttgart), where he studied for another two years before coming to Tübingen and the Protestant Stift in 1809. The first two years in the Stift were given, as usual, to the study of philosophy. The final three years were devoted to theology. This latter study took place under the faculty of the “Old Tübingen School,” which remained devoted to the defense of supernaturalism. Baur’s own educational program consequently bore the form of opposing “ideas,” both reading the philosophy of the day and learning a dogmatic form of theology that, despite all challenges, remained alive and well in Baur’s Swabian context. Baur completed his study at the university with the best exam of his class, spent two years in a vicarage, returned to the Stift as a tutor (Repetent), and in 1817 was called as a professor of ancient languages to the lower seminary in Blaubeuren. While in Blaubeuren, he published his first monograph (1824–1825), one that signaled the basic orientation of much of his following work: Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des Altertums.3 Under the influence of Schelling, he had come to understand history in its entirety as the gradual, stageby-stage revelation of the absolute. Christianity thus appears as the decisive stage in the general development of human religion. By this time, Baur also had absorbed Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre, and therewith had come to view the “idea” of religion as the essence present within its various individual forms, apart from which it could not be understood. Modern theology, for Baur, consequently had to take the form of a philosophy of religion: “without philosophy history remains for me eternally dead and silent.”4

3 Ferdinand Christian Baur, Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des Altertums, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1824/1825). The second volume was divided into two parts. 4 Baur, Symbolik und Mythologie, x; See Klaus Scholder, “Ferdinand Christian Baur,” TRE (1993) 5:352–4; Ulrich Köpf, “Ferdinand Christian Baur,” RGG, 4th ed. (1998) 1:1183–5.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

89

The publication of Baur’s first monograph was followed by a call the following year (1926) to the theological faculty in Tübingen—not without reservation on the part of some. There he remained active in his teaching until his death in 1860. Baur’s inaugural lecture in 1827, a comparison of ancient Gnosticism with the theology of Schleiermacher, was followed by a work on Manichaeism (1831) and then in 1835 by the most significant of his early works, Die christliche Gnosis, an account of the development of Christian philosophy of religion from ancient Gnosticism to the modern period, especially the thought of Schelling, Scheiermacher, and Hegel. As Baur understands it, Protestantism is a variety of Gnosticism, in that it sets gospel above law and represents Christianity as the religion of “freedom”—a freedom that Baur understands as the immediate consciousness of the divine that establishes the autonomy of the individual. While ancient Gnosticism remained dualistic and docetic because it posited a fundamental distinction between spirit and matter, Christianity differs, because it conceives of redemption in ethical terms. For Baur, nevertheless, none of the modern attempts at reconciling “spirit” and “matter” (or the related forms of freedom and determination, philosophy and history) have addressed the danger of docetism satisfactorily. Schelling, for whose work Baur long retained great appreciation, offers the possibility of understanding history in its progressive development as expressing the unity of God. History becomes complete for reason when empirical causes may be seen to be manifestations of a higher necessity. History is thus a drama that could have been composed only by an infinite Spirit.5 In Baur’s judgment, however, the connection between objective events and the subjective appropriation of them remains obscure with Schelling. Likewise, Schleiermacher’s approach, in the priority it assigns to the “feeling of absolute dependence” in establishing the validity of Christianity is decidedly subjective, offering no possibility of mediation with a historical point of reference—especially Jesus of Nazareth—and objective religion.6 It was finally Hegel, whose work Baur first studied in 1832, and with which he occupied himself in 1834–35, who offered him the scheme of the objective course of history consisting in the self-revelation of Spirit/spirit [Geist] through opposing ideas that develop into synthetic resolutions in dialectical progression.7 Baur remained, however, a decidedly independent thinker, bor5 See Johannes Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F.C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 70. 6 See Zachhuber, Theology as Science, 38–43. 7 With Hegel and Baur, Geist may refer either to the divine spirit or to the human spirit, or to both at once, as the two were identified. As Wickert comments, the extent to which the “spirit” (of Christianity) is of a “divine origin,” and how one is to distinguish between the world-spirit

90

Mark A. Seifrid

rowing only those elements from Hegel’s thought that fit his own developing program. As Baur’s treatment of the New Testament makes clear, he did not impose the Hegelian scheme of thesis-antithesis-synthesis on the sources, but found instead a process of mutual accommodation.8 Furthermore, and more fundamentally, although Hegel was the philosopher of history, he never really engaged history in the sense that Baur required, in the hard, but rewarding work of sorting out the details of historical events, and thereby arriving at objective reality. Hegel never really had any real interest in connecting Christ as an object of faith to the historic person of Jesus of Nazareth. The ideal was detached from the stuff of history. For Baur this constituted a fatal mistake. It represented the aporia that he sought to remedy. As we have noted, it remains a question as to whether he was successful in this attempt. And Baur was a child of his time, as Enlightenment Rationalism gave way to Romanticism and then Idealism. As we have observed, Baur transposes the locus of divine revelation from the Scriptures to human history, regarding it in idealist terms as bearing the self-communication of the S/ spirit, which comes to consciousness of itself in its progressive course of objectivization. Consequently, as Käsemann notes, Baur could appeal to the Reformation while undermining elements of its heritage. That is clearly the case in his transposition of the locus of revelation. From a Reformational perspective, the decisive matter is that the Word is the source for the revelation of history (and not the other way around). History is the place of encounter with the Word of God.9 In this respect, contrary to Baur’s own intention—and his extensive labors in objective historical study—his thought arguably remains self-enclosed. The same is true, correspondingly, of his conception of history. The world and its history remain for him a closed system, which follows its own natural course of progression that is the self-revelation of the Spirit. Granted, for Baur, God reveals himself within the course of history, but is there any room left here for a God who

and the Holy Spirit remains unclear with Baur. See Ulrich Wickert, “Einführung,” Das Christentum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, vol. 3 of Ferdinand Christian Baur: Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Klaus Scholder (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1966), xxvi. 8 E. g. Werner G. Kümmel, “Einführung,” Ferdinand Christian Baur: Vorlesungen über Neutestamentliche Theologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), xi–xii. 9 Ernst Käsemann, “Einführung,” Historisch-kritische Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, vol. 1 of Ferdinand Christian Baur: Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Klaus Scholder (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1963), xxiii. See also Kümmel, “Einführung,” xxvi, who rightly observes that Baur never got past the problem that the New Testament writings, despite their unreservedly historical nature, claim to be the address of God through the word of their authors.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

91

acts within history? 10 Correspondingly, Baur’s idealist construction cannot help but be primarily intellectual in nature. Encounter with God as person is absent. Miracle and wonder are excluded, since they are not subject to historical-critical investigation. The reality of the demonic is likewise minimized, as is the tragic fallenness of the present creation. They are subsumed into divine providence, and become transitory moments in a course of progress that is both rational and good. Apocalyptic is alien to Baur. There is no break in the narrative. His idealism allows no room for the in-breaking of the eschaton, neither in Jesus, nor at the end of history. In this respect, Jesus presents a special problem for Baur. On the one hand, Baur affirms that the absolute religion has entered into the world with Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of Christianity. In the person of Jesus, for the first time and uniquely, the unity of the human and divine has appeared concretely. Jesus is thus “bracketed out” of the history of Christianity that otherwise follows the developmental course of the Spirit’s self-revelation.11 On the other hand, for Baur, nevertheless, Jesus of Nazareth cannot be identified with the ideal Christ. It is only the case that the consciousness of unity with the divine is present in him in unparalleled measure. This Ebionitic tendency of Baur’s Christology, noted by Peter Hodgson, betrays a gap between Baur’s “speculative” philosophy of religion and his historical-critical program.12 The same is naturally the case for Baur’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. A bodily resurrection would constitute an absolute miracle, which historical investigation simply cannot accept. It remains out of bounds. It is sufficient for the historian to know that whatever took place, the resurrection became an effective reality in the faith of the disciples.13 This appeal to the faith of the disciples might well have extended without qualification to the resurrection itself, were it not for Baur’s philosophical commitments. Even if other causes for the faith of the disciples may well be considered, the bodily resurrection of Jesus remains the most plausible. Baur’s closed system of natural and historical causes simply cannot allow this possibility. In any case, as a result, a gap remains between the certainty of Baur’s idealist philosophy of religion and his historical-critical investigation. It was Baur’s very aim to eliminate this gap through his idealistic conception of history and his objective work as a historian.14 In this respect, Baur’s “Kantian” turn around 1850 might be regarded 10 On this question see Wickert, “Einführung,” xiv–xx. 11 See Kümmel, “Einführung,” xvi–xvii. 12 Peter C. Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology; a Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur, Makers of Modern Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 106. 13 Thus Wickert comments: “A miracle is here is conceded to the ‘faith of the Church,’ but eliminated from ‘historical observation’” (Wickert, “Einführung,” xvii). 14 Once again, on this aim and Baur’s failure to meet it, see Zachhuber, “The Absoluteness of Christianity,” 327–30.

92

Mark A. Seifrid

as a correction to his larger program. His earlier emphasis on the consciousness of unity with the divine as the essence of what was transmitted from Jesus to the church is now replaced by an emphasis on Jesus’ moral message.15 Despite his qualifications concerning the historical investigation of Jesus, Baur seems to violate his own principles in allowing the entrance of absolute religion into the world in him. Baur’s “Kantian” shift (if that is what it may be called) both softens the problem of the entrance of the absolute and sharpens the question of the consistency of his program. In his later, posthumously-published lectures on New Testament theology, Baur places the person and teaching of Jesus at the beginning of his analysis, making him, as an exception, the basis of a larger historical development. Yet Christianity now appears as a purely moral religion in its original elements.16 Is an absolute beginning still necessary? Between Baur’s inaugural lecture in Tübingen and the publication of Die christliche Gnosis, he lectured on the Christian system of symbols, and thereby presented the contrast between Catholicism and Protestantism as one of historically necessary stages of development. Both systems have elements of truth on their side, but the “idea” which lies behind both forms of religion cannot be comprehended fully within either of them. A response came from his counterpart in the Catholic faculty at Tübingen, Johann Adam Möhler, who argued that the existing differences could be resolved only by a return to the Catholic Church. An exchange followed, in which Baur’s conception of Protestantism comes to pointed expression. What in Catholicism is located in churchly hierarchy, tradition, and dogma is, according to Baur, transposed within Protestantism into the religious consciousness of the individual. Protestantism rests on the freedom of faith and of the conscience. The individual requires no mediation in relation to God. Even that which might be given through the visible church would be dependent on human authority. While in Catholicism religious consciousness comes through tradition and dogma, in Protestantism tradition, dogma, and symbols come through the consciousness of the individual. They remain signs of the ultimate idea that lies within and behind them. Again in this regard, Baur appeals to the Reformation while effectively undermining its heritage. He does so once again on the basis of the shift in the locus of revelation that we have noted. Luther’s conscience was free with respect to sin and guilt, but bound to the Word of God (which Luther identified, of course, with the Scriptures). Nor did Luther or his subsequent followers regard tradition or mediated knowledge as dispensable, as is apparent in Lutheran affirmation of the three ecumenical creeds. All tradition, however, had to be tested by the Scriptures. The criterion of that testing was Christ, and the justification of the ungodly, while for Baur it was self15 On Baur’s “Kantian” shift, see Kümmel, “Einführung,” xvii–xviii. 16 Rightly noted by Kümmel, “Einführung,” xvi.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

93

revelation of the Spirit in the course of history.17 In the question of the authority of tradition, Baur was a child of the Enlightenment, who could have no comprehension of Luther’s tormenting question as to whether he alone was right in his judgments against the tradition he had challenged. To Möhler’s claim that in Protestantism the individual is invited to become a self-enclosed and self-satisfied monad, Baur responds that monads exist in prestabilized harmony. His confidence in the objective power of truth remains unshaken. Freedom of faith and conscience do not call into question an ultimate unity, which comes to realization through periods of division, which are merely transitory from a higher perspective. Beyond the reality of human sinfulness—in Baur’s view, Protestantism takes sin far more seriously than Catholicism in its affirmation of the absolute dependence of the human being on God—there is within the human being a potential of original righteousness that can be actualized through the redemptive activity of God. As a result, out of human nature itself, the human being under grace can actualize the principle of free, selfdetermination that expresses itself in progressive development in the freedom of individual action. Protestantism differs from Catholicism, not only in that it places its faith solely in the Word of God, but in that it must give account for its faith, an account that cannot be given by faith itself, but only by knowledge.18 Faith is thus the “self-certainty of consciousness of objective truth” as it is mediated by (historical-critical) knowledge.19 The certainty of the truth of Christianity as “absolute religion,” remains no matter what particular form it might take. This certainty would seem to transcend historical knowledge and thereby again betray a failure to mediate between philosophy and history, as Baur intended to do.20 This certainty likewise suggests a conception of faith that is self-enclosed, its development and growth notwithstanding. According to Baur, faith “is the essential principle through which the subject frees himself from that outward objectivity which never lets him come to himself, and through which he raises himself to free, self-conscious subjecthood.”21 Although Baur is obviously 17 Rightly noted by Käsemann, “Einführung,” xxiv. 18 See Carl E. Hester, ed., Ferdinand Christian Baur: Die Frühen Briefe, vol 38 of Contubernium (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1993), 133 (Brief 75). Baur wrote in defense of his work to the Evangelischer Verein in Tübingen (a local ministerium), December 20, 1835. 19 See Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology, 175. Hodgson cites an essay in response to an attack by Hengstenberg from the same period, “Abgenöthigte Erklärung gegen einen Artikel der evangelischen Kirchenzeitung,” Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie (1836). 20 See yet again Zachhuber, “The Absoluteness of Christianity.” 21 Ferdinand Christian Baur, Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols. in 4, ed. F.F. Baur (Leipzig: Fues, 1865–67), 3:306, as cited by Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology, 175. For Hodgson’s entire discussion of Baur’s understanding of faith and historical knowledge, see Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology, 174–181. For Ulrich Wickert’s comments on Baur’s understanding of Christianity as a corporate reality, see Wickert, “Einführung,” x–xi.

94

Mark A. Seifrid

committed to historical work that overturns and transcends prior understanding, the “self” for Baur appears to remain ultimately unchanged, even its development and growth. It realizes a potential that already lies within itself. In historical investigation, one comes to oneself, just as the Spirit does in history. What is corporately the case for Christianity is true for the individual engaged in historical study. The final, universal reality is fixed, even if its form is in flux, and although the progress of the subject takes place in particular steps of development. The lack of an absolute point of reference in Baur’s system should not obscure this weakness. It only confirms it. Baur’s scholarly output was prodigious, due not only to his remarkable intellect but also to his rigorous habit of beginning his research daily at 4:00am and taking breaks only at midday and evening. One of his seminal works that proved to have an enduring impact, appeared as he completed his work on Manichaeism (1831): “Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde.” Here he proposed a fundamental opposition between early Jewish and Pauline Christianity, a scholarly position that at least in modified form has occupied New Testament scholarship ever since. That essay was followed in 1835 by his brief monograph on the “so-called Pastoral Epistles of Paul,” which he located in the second century on the basis of the controversy between the Gnosticism and developing orthodoxy that he found there. It, too, has shaped subsequent debate. It was as a Professor of Church and Dogmatic History that Baur had been called to Tübingen. His work in New Testament criticism was only part of his larger endeavors. His first, lengthy monograph on the history of doctrine appeared in 1838, a treatment of the Christian doctrine of the atonement (Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung). He followed it with a three-volume treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation in its historical development (1841–1843). Baur’s earlier treatment of the Pauline materials laid the groundwork for his critical history of earliest Christianity, in which he took Paul—or at least the four undisputed letters, Romans, Galatians, and the Corinthian correspondence—as his starting point (Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christ, 1845).22 It is with Paul, for Baur, that Jesus becomes more than a national, Jewish Messiah. He is morally universal, human, and divinely exalted. Just as all particular historical persons and events are subordinate to the universal and absolute which they bear, so also with Christ and the Christian message, as it was proclaimed by Paul. The unbridged gap in Baur’s program, which manifests itself in his refusal to identify the Christ of faith 22 See the detailed analysis of C. Landmesser, “Ferdinand Christian Baur als Paulus Interpret. Die Geschichte, das Absolute und die Freiheit,” Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des frühen Christentums, WUNT 333, ed. M. Bauspiess, C. Landmesser, and D. Lincicum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 161–94.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

95

with Jesus of Nazareth, is correlated to his construal of the relationship between the particular and universal, between early Jewish Christianity and the message of Paul. What for Paul may be described as a paradoxical coincidence of the particular and universal in the risen seed of David—the communicatio idiomatum —one that arguably shaped his understanding of his mission and the Church, becomes for Baur an ordered relation. The universal must absorb and remove the particular. This false understanding of the relationship between Jewish particularism and the universalism of the Gospel largely has remained commonplace, and has even received further impetus through most representatives of the “new perspective on Paul” (which in this regard turns out to be quite old).23 Correspondingly, the opposition of “the letter” and “the Spirit,” which for Paul is a necessary paradox within the drama of salvation and which is bound up with the crucified and risen Jesus, becomes for Baur the contrast between external authority and the immediacy of the self-awareness that constitutes faith. Baur finds his message in Paul, just as Luther does, but in very different terms. Only at this stage did Baur devote himself to a detailed analysis of the Gospels, publishing his Critical Investigations of the Canonical Gospels in 1847. He had already distanced himself from his former student in both Blaubeuren and Tübingen, David Friedrich Strauss, leading to an unhappy break in their relationship.24 Strauss’ challenge to the historicity of individual narratives lacked a detailed investigation of the Gospels that Baur regarded as requisite to solid historical work. Furthermore, mere negative criticism was insufficient for Baur. There also had to be a “positive” criticism, in which the subjectivity of the interpreter is overcome by the objective revelation of the divine in history. Thus the two basic elements of Baur’s program, his philosophy of religion and his historical-critical method, separated him from the radical criticism of the Gospels practiced by Strauss. Much as Strauss had done, Baur concluded that the Fourth Gospel was not written by a disciple of Jesus and was historically unreliable. Yet, like Griesbach before him, Baur maintained the priority of Matthew’s Gospel and found within it the authentic voice of Jesus—especially in the Sermon on the Mount. Although Baur was motivated by the concern to listen to the objective sources, and to allow his conclusions to be shaped by them, it is not difficult to see that his interpretive decisions serve his “speculative” program of discerning the absolute “idea” in its historical form. The essential authenticity of 23 See the complaints of D. Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity, Contraversions: Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), against which, however, Paul himself is immune. 24 It was, of course, Strauss’ Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen: Osiander, 1835) that led to the break in relationship. On the course of events, see Ulrich Köpf, “Ferdinand Christian Baur und David Friedrich Strauß,” in Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des frühen Christentums, 3–51.

96

Mark A. Seifrid

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount likewise seem to prepare for the “Kantian” shift in Baur’s thought that shortly followed. In the final years of his career, Baur undertook the massive project of writing a history of Christianity. He first presented his program and method, as to be expected, in historical context (Die Epochen der christlichen Geschichtschreibung, 1852), and followed it with a treatment of the first three centuries (1853) and then the fourth through sixth centuries (1859). Although Baur’s death in 1860 prevented him from completing the project, the manuscript for the third volume, covering the Middle Ages, was already prepared (1861). Two further volumes, drawn from Baur’s lectures, brought the work into the present (1862–1863). What remains, then, of Baur’s remarkable program? Ironically, Baur’s universalistic idealism has to be regarded as a product of the nineteenth century, and perhaps, as suggested above, the clash of rationalism and supernaturalism as it took place in nineteenth-century Swabia, and more particularly, in one of its pastor’s sons. Baur would take some satisfaction, nevertheless, in the recognition that the drive toward a comprehensive and universal interpretation of the New Testament (and therewith Christian faith) has not vanished. Both Adolf Schlatter and his appeal to the will and purpose of Jesus, and Rudolf Bultmann, with his existentialist interpretation of the New Testament, offered overarching interpretive programs that exercised considerable influence on twentieth-century scholarship. The remarkable project of N.T. Wright is the most prominent of current attempts to provide a comprehensive reading of the New Testament, encompassing the OT Scriptures, early Judaism, and the Greco-Roman world with a single—and thus universal—story. The prospect of an all-encompassing picture will always remain enticing. Truth has its place and can be recognized rightly and finally only in the context of the whole. In more than one way, however, the weaknesses of Baur’s program should serve as a warning to the ambition of arriving at a bird’s-eye view of God’s purposes. Not only was Baur unable to complete his nineteenth-century bridge of Lessing’s ditch, contrary to his own intention, in his unrelenting commitment to objective historical work he made it clear that presuppositionless exegesis is impossible.25 There is no method or approach that can guarantee access to historical reality.26 Nearly all the results of Baur’s research have been overturned or at the very least have lost broad support, from the conflict between Petrine and Pauline Christianity, to the priority of Matthew, to the dating of the Ignatian letters (and with them, much of the New Testament). Above all else, Christianity, 25 As noted by Käsemann, “Einführung,” xxiv, and echoed by Kümmel, “Einführung,” xxii– xxiii. 26 Again noted by Käsemann, “Einführung,” xxiii.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)

97

both early and late, was much more complex than Baur imagined. Its history is not best described as a course of progress. And what was true for Baur in his attempt at a comprehensive vision will prove true for us as well. We are all subject to our particular times and places. We know and prophesy only in part. Baur’s transposition of the locus of revelation from Scripture to history was accompanied by a twofold confidence, first in the power of the Spirit to communicate itself in history, and, secondly, in the capacity of the human being to receive and to submit to this objective revelation. That confidence proved empty in both respects. The father of historical criticism inadvertently developed his own criticism of historical-criticism. Biblical scholarship has long since departed from Baur’s idealism. But it largely has been unwilling to accept its inability to transcend its presuppositions. It thereby generally underestimates the accompanying danger of landing in predetermined and self-referential results. The very thought of such failure would seem to lead to despair. Yet the recognition of our limitations need not lead us to sad resignation or retreat from the task of interpretation. Indeed, this recognition, rightly conceived, should mark our liberation as interpreters. That can be so only if the Scriptures themselves possess the power to effect their own interpretation and thus to interpret their interpreters—an insight that may be attributed to Luther, but was overlooked by Baur and much of biblical scholarship in his wake.27 As one who already is interpreted by Scripture and therewith given—in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus— the interpretation of the Scripture and the world, the interpreter is set free and, indeed, called to explore and discover the limited contexts in which the biblical writings came into being and were written. The results of such research retain their significance, precisely because their claims are limited. The gift of the interpretation of the whole remains a gift, an unfathomable wonder, which the interpreter can never possess as an intellectual construct, but only hear and obey as a divine promise and address. We are thereby removed from the temptation of taking the place of an all-seeing “I” and making ourselves into final judges and arbiters of the truth. Here “biblical criticism” becomes a criticism that the Scriptures exercise on the interpreter, rather than a criticism the interpreter exercises on the Scriptures.28 A hermeneutic of suspicion must therewith become a hermeneutic of receptivity.29

27 On this question and its implications, see Oswald Bayer, Autorität und Kritik: Zu Hermeneutik und Wissenschaftstheorie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), esp. 11–32. 28 Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 70 (note 5). 29 On this question, see Peter Stuhlmacher, Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Toward a Hermeneutics of Consent, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).

98

Mark A. Seifrid

The limitation of the task of the interpreter to the elucidation of the limited contexts, settings, and functions of the biblical writings is a gift that should not be underestimated.30 Baur’s most significant and enduring theological contribution almost certainly lies in his recognition of the power of history in its concrete details to teach, instruct, and disclose meaning to us. One need not embrace his idealism in order to accept this contribution. One need only return to Baur’s earliest period, when he understood historical events and persons typically.31 Exploration of the biblical writings in their historical background only can be deepened and enriched by strict attention to background and context. In some measure—and not in the absolute sense that Baur imagined—historical study allows the distancing of the interpreter from the text that is necessary to the hearing and appropriation of it. In this respect, Baur’s work remains indispensable for us. Recent interest in “Theological Interpretation of Scripture” is to be welcomed, especially as a reaction to an arid historicism and concentration upon isolated issues—the very kind of work that Baur himself detested.32 But apart from a grounding in the history and background of biblical writings, this approach threatens to become either an abstract repetition of dogmatic positions already established or (given the spirit of our time) a moralizing reading of the text, or both at once. A return to the danger of abstract speculation that Baur once sensed? Paradoxically, it is the location of the text in its historical context in the past that allows it to speak most fully to the present. This legacy of the nineteenth century, to which Baur contributed significantly, is not a small one.

30 In this remark, I do not intend to exclude the possibility of writing a history of earliest Christianity or ancient Judaism, or the like, even if the larger context presents more challenges. It is the aim of discerning a comprehensive and universal picture that presents the ultimate problem. 31 At that point Baur stood quite close to Luther, who highly valued histories and chronicles, not as instances of the self-communication of the divine spirit, but as displays of God’s wrath and grace. See WA 15.52–53 and WA 50.383–385. 32 For an introduction to this approach, see Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

Hans Schwarz

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

Gottfried Thomasius is a direct descendent of the lawyer and philosopher Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) and a formative member of the Erlangen School of theology in the nineteenth century.1 He was born on June 26, 1802, in Egenhausen, a village in central Franconia, Bavaria. His father, Friedrich Christian Thomasius (1770–1847), was pastor in this village and instructed his son privately until he was sixteen. Gottfried then studied at the Gymnasium (high school) Carolinum in Ansbach (1818–1821). Formative for the young man was his religion teacher Theodor Lehmus (1777–1837), whose daughter Emilie he later married. Lehmus was one of the main representatives of the Franconian awakening.2 He adhered to speculative theology in the line of Hegel and “saw in Hegelian philosophy a chance to overcome theological rationalism.”3 Christian von Bomhard (1785–1862), a very knowledgeable and influential teacher of that time, also taught at this Gymnasium beginning in 1817. He tutored Thomasius privately and aroused his interest in scholarly work. “On September 27, 1821, Thomasius registered at the University of Erlangen as a student of philosophy and theology.”4 After three semesters he transferred in the spring of 1823 to the University of Halle. He noticed a different theological climate there and wrote to his father: “I will take good care not to be infected by the rationalists, since the air here is very rationalistic.”5 Only Georg Christian 1 For an excellent older survey of the life and work of Thomasius, see Hermann Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” in Lebensläufe aus Franken, vol. 1 of Im Auftrag der Gesellschaft für Fränkische Geschichte, ed. Anton Chroust (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1919), 451–476. 2 So Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984), 43. 3 Herbert Fischer, Die “neue Philosophie“ Ludwig Feuerbachs unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Konzepts der Ich-Du-Begegnung in der Liebe (Ph.D. diss., Bremen 2001), 17. 4 See the informative article by Albrecht Beutel, “Thomasius, Gottfried (1802–1875),” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie 33: 488–492, quotation on p. 488. 5 As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” in Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, new series 70 (1875): 113.

100

Hans Schwarz

Knapp (1753–1825), who had been full professor there since 1782, really impressed him. Knapp was the last representative of pietism in Halle, and had lasting influence; his Lectures on Christian Theology were published often, including in 1872 in a 20th American edition (New York: N. Tribbals). Thomasius reported: According to common judgment he is the best expert in the language of the New Testament and starts from a purely biblical view. On account of this, however, he has many critics among the rationalists.6

After another three semesters, Thomasius moved in the fall of 1824 to the University of Berlin and concluded his studies there in August 1825. These two semesters in Berlin were important because several teachers there made a lasting impression on him. He attended with great interest the lectures in dogmatics by August Tholuck (1799–1877). He also enjoyed the lectures on Christology and the history of dogma by August Neander (1789–1850). “Excellent are the lectures by Neander on Christology and history of dogma. He is both a very learned and pious person and in his field ranks at the top as a theologian.”7 He appreciated the speculative power of Philip Marheineke (1780–1846) but also noticed his neglect of the concept of a positive revelation. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) impressed him both as a teacher and as a preacher. Thomasius said of Schleiermacher, “He has a charm of his own. Everything is ingenious and vivid. He himself is of very short posture, his eyes sparkling. At the lecture desk he displays his brilliance in dialectics.”8 He concluded his assessment of the Berlin faculty saying: “In summary, a purely Christian mindset rules here among the theologians. There is no talk about this rationalism, because from the standpoint which is assumed here it refutes itself. A plain scholarly spirit is connected with the Christian life and everything is conducted in an ingenious manner.”9 Although Thomasius had his own struggles, he confessed that he had found a solid foundation on which to stand and he really enjoyed his academic pursuits. In his autobiography we read: “This was a somber time when there was much in flux. The battle between rationalism and supra-naturalism filled the minds of everyone and the universities. Nobody could participate in theological pursuits without being drawn into this battle. Therefore I have not only gotten to know these opposing movements from the outside but I have really lived and fought through them.”10 He found the solid ground on which to stand by tracing the 6 7 8 9 10

As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” 414. As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” 416f. As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” 416. As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” 417f. “Eine Selbstbiographie von Gottfried Thomasius vom Jahr 1842” related by Hermann Jordan in Beiträge zur bayerischen Kirchengeschichte 24 (1918): 141.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

101

development of the church and especially its doctrines. This interest stayed with him throughout his life. Thomasius did not get sidetracked by the many opportunities which Berlin had to offer, neither by those within the university nor by people on the outside to whom he had been introduced by his father. The only exceptions were lectures on the natural sciences by a visiting professor from the University of Breslau, Henrik Steffens (1773–1845), who opened a totally different perspective for him. The pietistic circles which were also coming into vogue with students did not impress him. He noticed there an exclusive attitude which he thought was to the disadvantage of the one church. He wrote: “In my opinion the custom of forming factions is exactly that which is most damaging to the Protestant churches.”11 The two semesters in Berlin were soon over and in the fall of 1825 Thomasius returned to his native Franconia. His plan was to immediately pursue an academic career, but economic necessities led him first into parish life. Having passed his first theological exam in 1825, Thomasius was appointed vicar (assistant pastor) in the little town of Cadolzburg near Nuremberg. He then substituted as pastor in Kalchreuth, also in central Franconia. In 1827 he passed his second theological exam and two years later was appointed to be the third pastor at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Nuremberg. The following year (1830) he married Emilie Lehmus (1808–1871), daughter of his former teacher in Ansbach, with whom he had two daughters, Henriette and Adelheid. As Hermann Jordan tells it: “He lived with her in a most happy marriage which was only clouded by the frequent illness of his wife.”12 In 1831 he received an appointment as the third pastor at the prestigious St. Lawrence Church in Nuremberg. Soon his first book appeared, a two-volume textbook entitled Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den mittleren und oberen Klassen gelehrter Schulen [Outline for Religious Instruction in Middle and Higher Grades in High Schools] (Nuremberg 1839/42, 11th ed., 1912). This standard text was the result of him being appointed as a high school religion teacher (Gymnasialprofessor) in 1830. The book was such a success that by royal order in 1841 it was introduced into all the high schools in Bavaria where it was used as a textbook for a half century. In Nuremberg “his preaching attracted the intellectual men of the city and his success as religious instructor in the gymnasium led to his call to Erlangen as professor of dogmatics in March, 1842.”13 An earlier attempt in 1839 to secure a call for him to the theological faculty did not materialize. In retrospect, Tho11 As quoted in “Briefe aus der Universitätszeit des seligen Thomasius,” 420. 12 Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 455. 13 So Adolf von Stählin, “Thomasius, Gottfried” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 11:430.

102

Hans Schwarz

masius considered his years in the parish to have been a portion of the “special grace of God.”14 He conceded: “At this point I had some academic knowledge of theology but only very little knowledge of the essence of the gospel. The Christian faith was for me more of the head than of the heart.” But having acquired not only practical skills but also a faith in which reason and piety came together, he was ready for academia. His call to the University of Erlangen considerably strengthened the emerging confessional Lutheran theology within the faculty, the so-called Erlangen School. When Adolf von Harless (1806–79) relinquished his post as university preacher, Thomasius was awarded the position on May 31, 1842. In his Nuremberg pastorate he had received 1600 gulden, but the new position in Erlangen paid only 1100 gulden plus 2 bushels of wheat, 2 bushels of corn, and 6 cords of wood.15 He nevertheless accepted the position gladly but asked for a raise of 200 gulden which he received upon accepting the position as university preacher. Thomasius could now pursue his academic interests; for the theological faculty in Erlangen, “calling Thomasius meant another step in the direction of founding a coherent Lutheran confessional theology, and it was finally completed in the ‘Erlangen Theology’.”16 The following year the faculty also bestowed on him an honorary doctor of theology (D. theol.), a custom for a newly called full professor, which was continued until recently. In April 1850 Thomasius received a call to the University of Leipzig as professor of dogmatics. Leipzig was willing to offer him up to 2000 thalers which would have doubled his salary. Nevertheless, “Thomasius immediately declined.”17 Shortly after, he was presumably offered the position of court preacher at Dresden.18 But he stayed in Erlangen for the rest of his life, until he died on January 24, 1875, after a brief illness. His colleague Gerhard von Zezschwitz (1825–86) delivered the funeral sermon and Gottfried Thomasius was buried at the Neustädter Cemetery in Erlangen. He was succeeded at the University by Reinhold Frank (1827–94). His lectures covered the area of dogmatics, the creeds, history of dogma, history of Protestant theology, and practical exegesis. As a teacher of religious instruction he received wide attention and recogniton with his two small volumes, Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den mittleren Klassen [Outline for Religious Instruction in Learned Middle Schools] (Nuremberg: August Recknagel, 1839); and Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den oberen 14 “Eine Selbstbiographie von Gottfried Thomasius,” 141f., for this and the following quotation. 15 See Hermann Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802– 1875,” 458. 16 So, rightly, Hermann Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 459. 17 Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 458. 18 Albrecht Beutel (“Thomasius,” 488) writes that the sources do not definitely show that he indeed received such a call.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

103

Klassen gelehrter Schulen [Outline for Religious Instruction in Learned High Schools] (Nuremberg: August Recknagel, 1839). These two volumes went through eleven editions and were used in Bavarian schools for more than seventy years. In the first volume Thomasius offers a salvation history approach, since according to Christ the goal which all people should yearn to attain is salvation. This is described with different concepts such as “salvation, life, justice, kingdom of God.”19 Then he provides a history of the Old Testament witness to this goal starting with creation and ending with the post-exilic Judaism. In the second part, Das Reich Gottes unter dem Neuen Bunde [The Kingdom of God under the New Covenant], he begins with the fullness of time and after a narration of the impact of Jesus and the Pauline corpus he concludes with the Book of Revelation. With regard to the latter he writes: “It has been given to the Christian church as a book of consolation in all the tribulations, especially the suffering in the end-time, and as a book of admonition to keep alive the hope for the coming of the Lord.”20 A chronological table is added, as well as eight maps. In its brevity and yet incisiveness it is a masterpiece. The second volume for the upper level of the Gymnasium is a brief dogmatics. As he says in his preface, it presupposes the history of the kingdom of God and the most important parts of the Bible, especially of the New Testament. It shows its Protestant character by emphasizing its biblical base. Again everything is concise and clearly worded. Concerning the law he says for instance: “Sum total of the law: Complete, unconditional dedication of the heart to God, exclusive love of God. … Purpose of the law: 1. It is supposed to serve as a barrier against sin and as a guideline for living. … 2. It is supposed to be a means to discern sin.”21 The slender volume concludes with the following summary: “Christendom is therefore the restitution of the original communion between God and humanity achieved by Jesus Christ; more precisely, the restitution of fallen humanity to God, a restitution having been started by the Father, mediated by the Son, and enacted by the Holy Spirit.”22 Then follow some remarks about eschatology and ecclesiology before the book ends at only sixty-two pages. Again, a brief masterpiece. As Hermann Jordan claimed: This second volume especially, which was published first, “had gained its historic significance insofar as after the age of rationalism had ended it furthered the re-

19 See Gottfried Thomasius, Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den mittleren Klassen gelehrter Schulen, ed. Gustav Holzhauser, 11th ed., ed. Wilhelm Engelhardt (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1912), 1. 20 Thomasius, Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den mittleren Klassen, 175. 21 Gottfried Thomasius, Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den oberen Klassen gelehrter Schulen (Nuremberg: August Recknagel, 1839), 24. 22 Thomasius, Grundlinien zum Religions-Unterricht an den oberen Klassen, 51.

104

Hans Schwarz

introduction of a biblically-grounded and confessionally-oriented religious instruction in the schools of higher learning in Bavaria.”23

Re-awakening in Bavaria As can be seen in his outline for religious instruction, Thomasius’ real love was history. It comes as no surprise that he also devoted a book to the history of his home state Bavaria during the first forty years of the nineteenth century. The title shows his intent: Das Wiedererwachen des evangelischen Lebens in der lutherischen Kirche Bayerns. Ein Stück süddeutsche Kirchengeschichte (1800–1840) [The Re-awakening of the Evangelical Life in the Lutheran Church of Bavaria. A Piece of Church History of Southern Germany] (Erlangen: Deichert, 1867). He emphasizes at the outset that this awakening was not due to a peculiar theological school or a prominent theologian. It simply broke out all at once at many different places “awakened by the spirit of God as in springtime by a gracious rain everywhere the germs and buds break forth from the earth.”24 Eventually it grew and had witnesses in word and deed with its representatives in pulpits and in lecture halls. Thomasius sees its basic thrust as being in the proclamation of the justification of the sinner by grace through faith. Thomasius discerns three stages in this awakening.25 The approximate date of the first stage was during the years 1814–19, including the wars of liberation of the German states from Napoleon which also coincides with the 1817 anniversary of the onset of the Reformation, namely, the publication of Luther’s 95 theses. The electorate Bavaria was made into a kingdom (1806) and the Protestant Church in Bavaria was newly reorganized. The reorganization was necessary since through the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, several Protestant Free Imperial Cities were incorporated into Bavaria, such as Nuremberg and Rothenburg, plus the principality of Ansbach and in 1809/10 the principalities of Bayreuth and Regensburg. Each territory had its own tradition with regard to piety, governance, and worship. Thomasius sketched out these changes and also the religious situation prior to 1815 with regard to the lecture hall, the pulpit, the schools, and the congregations. As he noted, pietism had made occasional inroads but of a spirtualistic and separatistic nature.26 While he observed that rationalism had permeated the masses of the people, it was not antagonistic against the church and the Christian faith. 23 Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 456. 24 Gottfried Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen des evangelischen Lebens in der lutherischen Kirche Bayerns. Ein Stück süddeutsche Kirchengeschichte (1800–1840) (Erlangen: Andreas Deichert, 1867), 1. 25 For a brief summary, see Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 2. 26 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 5.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

105

There was still “a certain surface adherence to the church” (eine gewisse äußere Kirchlichkeit), while at the same time there was a noticeable “moral decay, religious indifference, and non-judgmental lethargy.”27 Although rationalism ruled uncontested, there was already developing in silence “a powerful evangelical reaction” which at its inception dates back to the years 1814–18.28 One can discern various external influences, but the first impulses came from inside and they ignited the fire. These were the aforementioned wars of liberation and the 300th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 1817. Rationalism was still in full bloom but in many small circles, often of a pietistic persuasion, something new was beginning. Thomasius characterizes this as a time of searching, becoming, and wavering. The influences of the spirit of the time [Zeitgeist, a phrase often used today by conservatives in a pejorative sense] can often be seen in those who are becoming awakened.29

The second stage (1825–27) is the consolidation phase when the Homiletischliturgische Korrespondenzblatt was founded in 1825 and became the mouthpiece of this awakening movement. Thomasius devotes a whole chapter to this journal and narrates: Several pastors gathered with the still undetermined feeling that something must happen “to cultivate the true and good, to connect more closely the bond among the evangelicals of the country.”30 While in the first year they were still intent to favor neither rationalism nor mysticism, but pietism, which became an “organ for the newly awakened Christian realization of salvation, a gathering point for like-minded friends, a sword of the determined battle against the ruling unbelief.”31 Even some articles in the first volume were severely criticized. Small wonder that this caused a severe reaction, but soon rationalistic voices disappeared completely from the journal. The editors pursued a positive evangelical direction and gathered a strong following, among them the father-in– law of Thomasius, Theodor Lehmus, and his brother Wilhelm. Also August Bomhard (1787–1869) and Heinrich Bomhard joined the editorial board. They were brothers of his former teacher at the Gymnasium in Ansbach, Christian Bomhard. Some copies of the Korrespondenzblatt made it beyond the borders of Germany all the way to England and North America. It did considerable service to the Lutheran Church, as Thomasius notes. “It was a wake-up call for the conscience of the church, the loud and clear trumpet sound of a newly commencing 27 28 29 30

Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 72. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 73. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 170. Das Wiedererwachen, 172. Instead of the more inclusive phrase “Protestant” to translate “evangelisch” we here retain the term “evangelical” and use “Protestant” for “protestantisch.” 31 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 173.

106

Hans Schwarz

day. Its effectiveness was founded especially in the resoluteness with which it confronted rationalism and the bold and courageous witness with which it interceded for the ancient faith.”32 This journal broke the supremacy of rationalism and encouraged, strengthened, and gathered the evangelical voices already present. It may seem somewhat surprising that in describing this consolidation phase Thomasius devoted two chapters to his father-in–law. For example, the following statement is very much a eulogy to honor him: “Theodor Lehmus was one of the most noble and powerful witnesses of the Christian truth, a dreaded and victorious champion against rationalism. He also stands for the transition from the evangelical and practical direction, in part still colored by pietism, to a scholarly and ecclesial one.”33 Yet the space Thomasius allotted to Lehmus may have been justified since “his influence went far beyond the boundaries of his office to the whole development of the Church. He was active in the general synod as far as consultations were concerned on catechism, hymnal, order of worship, and in general new organic institutions.”34 As mentioned above, the new and considerably enlarged Lutheran Church in Bavaria needed not just a new structure but also unifying tools such as a hymnal and orders of worship, and Theodor Lehmus seemed to have played an important role in developing both of these. When Thomasius arrived at the third stage of the movement we see some surprising developments: As renewal occurred with his father-in–law so did it occur in the life of other individuals, in the synod gatherings, and in academia. The evangelical mindset was without a break transformed into a churchly form. The roots of this new awakening were faith in Christ, awareness of the need for salvation through the forgiveness of sins and justification by grace. With these ingredients, he wrote, we are back to the renewal which began in the church in the sixteenth century. “This means we were Lutherans before we were aware of it. We were this in fact without much thought of the confessional peculiarities of our church and of the confessional differences which separate us from each other. … So we have freely become Lutherans from our heart.”35 It comes as no surprise that this movement to which Thomasius belonged was ecumenical in outlook. His appreciative accounts of the Roman Catholic theologian and bishop of Regensburg, Johann Michael Sailer (1751–1832), and of the pastor of the Reformed church in Erlangen and later professor at the University of Erlangen, Johann Christian Krafft (1784–1845) bear witness to this.36 Yet an aggressive Roman Catholicism and enforced Prussian Union between Lutherans and Reformed 32 33 34 35 36

Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 190. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 242. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 242f. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 244f. See Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 135ff. and 117ff.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

107

showed the necessity of a solid confessional stance without becoming confessionalistic. As Thomasius tells it, one began to appreciate a peculiar confession as necessary for sound doctrine and from that followed an appreciation of the sacraments and of the church. “It was just now that it dawned on us that the Christian faith does not want to save the souls of individual people but it wants to establish a communion of faith and life, a real communion, a community of God in the world. It dawned on us that the church is an independent entity of life, an essential appearance of the Christian faith.”37 Therefore he paid close attention in his narrative to the conventions of the general synod, the first being held in 1823. Yet it was not until the convention of 1836 in Ansbach that those who were also active in the Korrespondenzblatt prevailed against the forces of rationalism. And it was not until the 1840 convention that the order of worship (Agende) was unanimously adopted. After fourteen years the Homiletisch-liturgische Korrespondenzblatt ceased to exist and was replaced by the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche [ Journal for Protestantism and the Church].38 Thomasius says that initially he and several others should have become the editors. But then Adolf von Harless (1806–79) decided that he alone would be the editor. Thomasius joined the editorship anyway, together with Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810–77), beginning with volume 12 in 1846, and continued in this position until 1859 when he resigned on account of an overload of other work. The intention of the new journal was to be a “scholarly representation of the ecclesial confession.”39 It was actually spawned because of a twofold opposition which threatened to endanger the existence of this confession and the church that was built on it, “an aggressive Catholicism and a Protestantism without any confession.” Some Roman Catholics claimed that Protestantism had run its course and Catholicism should resume its reign in academics and life in general. For Protestants on the one hand the opponent was once the familiar rationalism, but on the other hand there was also a pietistic separatism which preferred its own life separate from the church, and finally there was a theology which leveled all the confessional differences and had its roots in the (Prussian) Union. Therefore it was believed that the title of the new journal, Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, should show “that in our endeavors we are in decided opposition to a church that does not want to have anything to do with Protestantism, and a Protestantism that does not want to

37 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 247f. 38 Thomasius once wrote that it appeared in 1837 (Das Wiedererwachen, 187), but elsewhere he says: “In spring of 1838 we founded it in Erlangen (Das Wiedererwachen, 279). Evidently 1838 is the correct date. After five volumes, without obvious reason, it appeared in 1841 as Neue Folge (new sequence) again with volume 1. 39 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 249, for this and the following quotation.

108

Hans Schwarz

have anything to do with the church. This journal declared war on both.”40 It was believed however, that this conflict should not preempt the main purpose of the journal which is “up-building one’s own house.” This means to let the insights of the Reformation unfold freely so that the tree of life may flourish again.41 Thomasius is convinced that if both individual Christians and the church are nourished by the living waters of the (Lutheran) Confessions then “we can face the future with confidence.”42 The book ends with an appendix in which Thomasius pays tribute to his father, Friedrich Christian Thomasius (1770–1847), who in his verbal contributions at conventions helped to bring about the establishment of a confessional church in Bavaria. In the Das Wiedererwachen des evangelischen Lebens in der lutherischen Kirche Bayerns Thomasius already showed the need for a confessional church. His 1848 publication, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche in der Konsequenz seines Prinzips [The Confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Consequences of this Principle], is devoted to this need. As he relates in the preface, this slender volume grew out of a series of essays entitled “The Consequences of the Protestant Principle” which were published in the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche.43 He concedes that some might accuse him of having no objectivity in his exposition of the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. But he is content with this because he perceives in both an expression of his own faith. “I rejoice in it to know that I am one with the common faith of this church to which I belong by God’s grace.”44 It is not surprising that he feels so much at home in it, since it is “the confession of the free grace of God in Christ as it is explicated in the symbolic writings of our church and has its living center in justification by faith.”45 For him the symbolic writings of the church are not words and terms of ecclesial agreement but express the faith of the people. “It is not the task of an ecclesial symbol to represent the total content of Holy Scripture, but to put into words only those salvific deeds and experiences witnessed by Scripture. It must be done to the extent that the congregations have understood it and public opposition is raised.”46 Ultimately a congregation should recognize in

40 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 281. 41 A good review of the history of this journal is provided in “Zur Geschichte unserer Zeitschrift nach Ablauf des ersten Vierteljahrhunderts ihres Bestehens” in Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, new series 46 (1863): 1–88. 42 Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 304. 43 “Die Konsequenz des protestantischen Prinzips,” in Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche 12 (1846): 170–196 and 238–244, 14 (1847): 73–109, and 15 (1848): 339–367. 44 Gottfried Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche in der Konsequenz seines Prinzips (Nuremberg: August Recknagel, 1848), v. 45 Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 1. 46 Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 227.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

109

the Formula of Concord “the expression of its own faith.”47 For Thomasius there is an organic development from Scripture to the confessions to the faith of the individual believer. As much as the confessions of the church are the fruits of a living development, “they do not want to be the end point for the growth in the knowledge of the revealed truth but provide a foundation for this.” The Formula of Concord is not the result of the work of theologians but a living part of an organic development engendered by God’s saving activity in Christ. With the emphasis on an organic development Thomasius could be open-minded and at the same time be deeply steeped in the Lutheran witness to the gospel. When Wilhelm Löhe wanted to leave the Lutheran Church of Bavaria, Thomasius together with von Hofmann persuaded him to stay even though Löhe thought this church had betrayed the gospel.48 Thomasius was renowned as a preacher and published many of his sermons. A deep and conscientious dependence on Scripture, a joyous and powerful faith, a clear and comprehensible form elevated by its content and even poetically inspired, are the characteristics which won attention in his published sermons (5 vols., Erlangen, 1852– 60).49

This estimation by Hermann Jordan is certainly true: Thomasius developed his most important effectiveness as a preacher. … There he was really at home. [When he was preaching] his whole personality came to the fore. The listener felt that what the preacher said was witnessed from an inner experience.50

He also composed a new series of pericopes which was endorsed by the supreme consistory of Bavaria (Oberkonsistorium) as of July 15, 1868, for potential use in church services. Thomasius was also the representative of the Erlangen theological faculty to the Bavarian general synod from 1853, and (as mentioned above) from 1846 to 1859 he served as one of the editors of the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche. In 1867 he resigned as university preacher but took on the office of university chaplain (Universitätsseelsorger), which he held until 1872. Yet he continued his lectures virtually until he died in 1875.

47 Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 234, for this and the following quotation. 48 Cf. Erika Geiger, Wilhelm Löhe 1808–1872: Leben –Werk – Wirkung (Neuendettelsau: Freimund, 2003), 180. 49 So Adolf von Stählin, “Thomasius,” 430. 50 Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 468.

110

Hans Schwarz

Dogmatics Thomasius wrote a dogmatics according to a strictly Lutheran theology: Christi Person und Werk. Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkt der Christologie aus [The Person and Work of Christ: Exposition of the Lutheran Dogmatics from the Center of Christology] (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1852–62; 2nd ed., 1856–63; 3rd ed., 1886–88). Just the first volume of this three-volume work contained more than 500 pages. Important for him is a continuous development of the faith which is deeply grounded in the Christian tradition. He writes: “Therefore my work looks more to the past than to the future. There is little intention to provide something new, or even the new or peculiar which it may per chance contain. It wants to be perceived only as a development of the old and that which we hold in common.”51 He does not understand Lutheran in a confessionalistic manner but as the middle ground between confessionalistic opposition and that which is grounded in Scripture. As some evangelical believers today would say: “I have experienced that I am saved.” The starting point therefore is the living personal faith in Christ the savior.52 Then Thomasius looks for congruence with the biblical testimony and with the witness of the confessions. All three must agree with each other whereby the starting point is the testimony of Scripture. If this were missing Thomasius is sure that we would be in error.53 Thomasius starts with the doctrine of God as the presupposition to Christology. He asserts: “The Christian concept of God results from the basic fact of the Christian faith. This basic fact we describe as the communion of the person with God, meaning a personal communion.”54 The starting point is one’s own faith or experience. Then he traces the notion of God through the Old and the New Testaments, through the ancient fathers up to Lutheran Orthodoxy, and then reviews contemporary voices on the subject. Finally he arrives at his own systematic reflections. The same procedure is followed for creation, the fall, and human sinfulness. This is how the first volume ends. The whole history of the world is perceived as one forward-moving entity. The appearance of Jesus Christ in the world is the focal point of the whole history of salvation and of the world. The whole prehistoric revelation has as its goal the preparation and introduction of this great fact. In the same way it has itself become the 51 Gottfried Thomasius, Die Voraussetzungen der Christologie, vol. 1 of Christi Person und Werk: Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkt der Christologie aus, 2nd ed. (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1856), iv (Preface to the 1st ed.). 52 See Notger Slenczka, Der Glaube und sein Grund. Studien zur Erlanger Theologie I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 28, for his summary of the position of Thomasius. 53 See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:10. 54 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:12.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

111

starting point of a salvation history. This history is still in a vivid stage of development and will reach its end with the end of time.55

Christocentricity was important for him but also the development of Christian doctrines through the ages.56 The second volume, Die Person des Mittlers [The Person of the Mediator] (1855; 2nd ed. 1857), comprises again more than 500 pages. In this volume there is a controversial understanding of the incarnation. August Dorner (1809–84) accused Thomasius of having defected from “ecclesial Christology.”57 In defending his position Thomasius asserts that the three foundations of Lutheran Christology are the true humanity of Christ, the true divinity of Christ, as well as the unity of both in the one person. Yet he does not see how this can be done without the assumption of a self-limitation of the divine logos which coincides with the incarnation. Without this assumption I cannot understand the presupposed unity of the subject, a unity which is central to me and the Lutheran church.58

This self-limitation is only possible if the immanent properties of the Godhead (absolute power, eternity, absolute holiness, truthfulness, and love) are distinguished from the relative properties (omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience). The immanent properties are essential, while the relative are not essential for God, since they deal with God’s relation to the world, but the world is not constitutive for God. During the incarnation, God is no omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient human being. This is so because he does not want to be that. But as the incarnate One he is and remains absolute power, truthfulness, holiness, and love. This means he remains essentially God.59

Thomasius considers it better to use the distinction between immanent and relative properties than to say that in the incarnation God has all these properties but does not use them. But, as the church historian Karlmann Beyschlag (1923– 2012) notes, it was assumed through the ancient tradition that the whole godhead was incarnate in Jesus Christ. A kenosis or self-limitation can only occur in the Christ who is already incarnate. Thomasius’ idea of a self-limitation, however,

55 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:1. 56 Martin Kähler, Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Ernst Kähler (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1962), 182, writes: “The fact that he preferred to lecture on the history of dogma shows that his heart beat for tracing the history of Christian dogmas, the Christian teachings.” 57 According to Gottfried Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, vol. 2: Die Person des Mittlers, 2nd ed. (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1857), 542. 58 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:543. 59 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:546.

112

Hans Schwarz

results “in a division of being God in the process of incarnation,”60 for one part is incarnate while the other part remains “outside” the incarnation. Paul Althaus (1888–1966) also reminds us that the properties are constitutive of the Godhead, the relative ones as well as the immanent ones. They belong inseparably together. To think of God without a part of these means to think no longer of the true Godhead.61

Yet Althaus lauds Thomasius for having shown the problems with the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ. At the same time Thomasius missed the fact that the mystery of the incarnation cannot be understood rationally. In Jesus the Christ there is the paradox of true humanity and true divinity in one single person. The third volume, Das Werk Christi [The Work of Christ], is divided into two parts each comprising approximately 500 pages. The first half of the first part is concerned with “The Singular Restitution of the Communion between God and Humans” and the other half with “The Continual Mediation of the Once-and-forall Restituted Communion between God and Humans.”62 The second part continues with the mediation, concluding with the means of grace, then the order of salvation, and the church. The last half is devoted to eschatology under the rubric “The Completion of the Communion between God and Humans.” Concerning the Lord’s Supper Thomasius notes that it is first and foremost given for the forgiveness of our daily sins which a person still commits after baptism. But there is also a specific blessing: It is the corporeality of the Lord himself which mediates itself to the inner human being who is renewed by baptism, a corporeality which posits itself in a mediating way for this person as his or her substantial ground of being. This person receives with the celestial corporeality of the divine-human being a nature-like foun-

60 Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1993), 96, n. 180. 61 Paul Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit. Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 5th ed. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1959), 454. 62 In this first part Thomasius differs from von Hofmann with regard to his understanding of Jesus’ suffering. While Thomasius emphasized that Jesus atoned for our sins by being punished for our sake, von Hofmann perceives the salvific significance of Jesus’ suffering in proving himself as the divine-human mediator. For this, see (extensively) Sebastian Renz, Versöhnung als Zentrum christlichen Lebens. Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875): Entwicklung, Bedeutung und Perspektiven einer lutherischen Theologie (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007). See also Gottfried Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der lutherischen Kirche von der Versöhnung und die Versöhnungslehre D.Chr.K. v. Hofmanns, postscript Theodosius Harnack (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1857).

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

113

dation, or, as one could say, an actual potentiality which serves to strengthen and fortify the human being.63

What Thomasius has in mind here sounds very much like the concept of theosis in the Orthodox tradition. This impression is reinforced when he declares that the Lord’s Supper will infuse in the faithful recipient the spiritual life forces which reside in this transfigured body, the divine-human fullness of life of the exalted Christ.64

This idea that there is a twofold effect of the Lord’s Supper, the forgiveness of sins and a “bodily” effect towards sanctification was also shared by other Erlangen theologians, as is noted by Karlmann Beyschlag.65 Paul Althaus, a representative of the second phase of Erlangen theology, however, cautioned that for such an assertion of a special twofold blessing of the Lord’s Supper “the scriptural basis is missing” and “dogmatically it is very dangerous,” since it would elevate the Lord’s Supper over the proclamation of the Word.66 The effect of the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of the spiritual life of the believer is already in the proclamation of the gospel and in baptism, as Althaus observes. Since Thomasius adduces not just the New Testament witness but also the Greek Fathers with the concept of pharmakon athanasias [medicine of immortality] (p. 78), it is not surprising that he arrives at a more elevated interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. After all, there is a progression from proclamation to baptism and then to the Supper. Thomasius observes: If Luther had agreed to the view that the Lord’s Supper mediates essentially nothing else than the Word he would have spared himself the difficult battle with the Swiss.67

With Leonhard Hutter (1563–1616), he agrees that each sacrament mediates not just a general grace, but also a special grace, a peculiar gift so to speak, so that the general effect of grace is reinforced.68 (It is interesting to note that in recent years some Finnish Luther scholars have picked up the notion of theosis as amenable to Lutheran theology.) Thomasius’ dogmatics treatise is impressive not just by its sheer volume but also because of his careful attention to the scriptural basis and to the tradition of the church from the Fathers through the Middle Ages up to the discussion taking place during his own time. While he does not hide his deep piety and his Lutheran 63 Gottfried Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, vol. 3/2, 2nd ed. (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1863), 54. 64 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3/2:73. 65 See Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 96, esp. n. 181. 66 Althaus, Die christliche Wahrheit, 588. 67 Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3/2:137. 68 See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3/2:133.

114

Hans Schwarz

persuasion this tome is conciliatory throughout attempting to integrate rather than divide. It is no surprise that it was widely read. In the history of dogma Thomasius first made a name for himself with a monograph on Origen of Alexandria long before his two-volume history of dogma. The book on Origen was written during his tenure as pastor at St. Lawrence in Nuremberg. Dedicated to his father and his father-in–law, the investigation develops his program of the development of dogma “which by inner necessity progresses step by step in a truly dialectic movement.”69 This developmental process leading to increasing order is attributed to the Holy Spirit “who is promised to the church and is to lead it in all truth.”70 Christ is the absolute truth. “Since this truth is divine, it is also eternal and unchangeable.”71 Therefore only its human perception will change but not its divine content and essence. Thomasius begins with the first Christian witnesses and shows especially how under the influence of the Hellenistic spirit this perception changed. Yet he affirms that the Christian element was always the dominant one even if individual theologians were influenced by Hellenistic thought. They could not discern the essential difference between the Christian faith and Hellenistic philosophy, since they were entangled in the latter.72

Nevertheless he insists that the general ecclesial doctrine did not suffer and that some claims (for instance, that the dogma of the trinity was influenced by Platonism) are simply misguided. It is surprising how much attention Thomasius devotes to the “pre-history” of Origen and to the intellectual context in which he lived and worked. The later debate about the influence of the Hellenistic spirit (as in Harnack) is already picked up and defused. In this book Thomasius proceeds in two steps. In the first hundred pages he describes “the dogmatic standpoint of Origen,” setting him in the context of his time and portraying certain issues in his system. For instance, he lauds Origen for having more precisely determined with the concept of eternal generation the personhood of the Son and of the Spirit and their unity. But the relationship is unsatisfactorily developed of the personhood of the Son to his being of the same essence with the Father.73 In a second larger part (pp. 97–264) he presents “The Dogmatic System of Origen” after having ascertained which of the sources can be trusted to depict Origen’s dogmatics. The extensive footnotes occupy another 69 Gottfried Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts (Nuremberg: Leonhard Schrag, 1837), 7. The argument is in part repeated verbatim in the introduction to the first volume of his history of dogma. 70 Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 10. 71 Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 4. 72 Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 19. 73 See Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 69.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

115

ninety pages. One cannot but be impressed with the command of the material and the objectivity with which it is presented. Having made clear that he does not always agree with Origen, he can present Origen’s notion of a universal homecoming and of a cyclic view of history without a critical comment.74

The History of Dogma Nearly forty years later, Thomasius published his massive history of dogma. The title for his work immediately shows his intent: Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte als Entwicklungs-Geschichte des kirchlichen Lehrbegriffs [Christian History of Dogma as a History of the Development of the Ecclesial Concept of Doctrine] (1874/76; 2nd ed., 1886/89). The history of dogma is not an accidental history but it is the history of the Christian faith within the channel of the church. As he says in the preface to volume one, he was not concerned about individual points, but sought “to portray the great organic whole of the development of dogma and the decisive motifs.”75 But the notion of development is important not just for the history of dogma, but also for the individual believer. Implicitly the whole treasure of the gospel, the whole richness of the Christian faith lies in the heart of the faithful. The truth of salvation is still embraced there as in a seed. But the living seed waits for its development.76

He sees two different but complementary ways of development that enrich each other. In the first one the believer proceeds from his or her own consciousness of salvation, from the experience of salvation; the second way proceeds from reflection on the objective word. As far as the first one is concerned, faith is there primarily an experience of salvation through Christ. … The other way preferably goes in the direction of the word, be it as living proclamation, as tradition or as embraced in writing.77

Luther and Augustine are examples of the former, while Athanasius and Anselm are examples of the latter. For Thomasius, mind and heart (or knowledge and experience) are not mutually exclusive. Knowledge deepens and sharpens experience and the experience deepens and vivifies knowledge. He claims there is only a gradual progress of the development of the content of faith depending on the individuality of the faithful. This faith needs an articu74 See Thomasius, Origines. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts, 256– 259. 75 Gottfried Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte als Entwicklungs-Geschichte des kirchlichen Lehrbegriffs, vol. 1 (Erlangen: Andreas Deichert, 1874), vi. 76 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:3. 77 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:4f.

116

Hans Schwarz

lated and formulated confession for counseling and educating individuals, for the external mission, and for the common calling of the kingdom of God. Of course there is already the most basic confession “that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Rom. 10:9). Thomasius calls it “the most original and most central” basic confession.78 He says, however, that great as it is, this creedal statement is not sufficient for the task and therefore needs to be explicated. The common faith needs to be elaborated into a dogma. The dogma has an external and an internal side. The internal is the divinely revealed truth of salvation and in this respect it is absolutely true and unchangeable. The external is the human ecclesial form through which the content actually becomes a dogma. The dogma becomes a truth of faith only after it has given itself a conceptual expression in which the common faith detects its content. This means it becomes a truth of faith once it has become the object matter of ecclesial negotiations, ascertainments, and designations.79

These designations are especially important since they become the vessels for the content, the form in which the content has opened itself to the ecclesial consciousness. It is one of the most important tasks of the church to transform this common faith into individual dogmas. Thomasius likens the church to a huge organism in which there are many different gifts represented by the personalities who work in the church. Some have the depth of feeling, others the clarity of reflective thought, others are more theoretical and contemplative and so on. These are the various organs with which God gifted the church. Since these are not isolated persons there is a giving and receiving, a mutual interchange. The results become part of the tradition of the church. Then there are the scholarly forces, for instance, of the Alexandrian or the Antiochian type, or of the realist or nominalist. They work on the forms and the concepts and bring clarity to the emerging dogma. As Thomasius observes, here we can discern best the influence of general education of the respective time, and in part also the philosophical schools and systems in a helpful or irritating manner.80

Yet it is clear for Thomasius that neither philosophy nor theology makes the dogma. Rather its roots are in the church’s consciousness and experience of faith. But he even alludes to national elements that should not be forgotten, such as the Greek and the Roman peculiarities. Through these various forces and influences the confessions of the church finally emerged. The history of dogma is an integral part of the history of the church and it goes through its phases within this larger history and is often conditioned by it. 78 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:7. 79 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:8. 80 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:10.

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

117

Thomasius distinguishes three phases: the ancient church, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation. In the first period the main dogmas evolved which provided the foundation for further development. In the second period the material was further developed but some moved in the wrong direction as we can discern in the scholastic strand. This necessitated the Reformation. In this third period the wrong directions were righted, but through the regained clarity the insights were also deepened and were developed into the teachings of the evangelical church while the other remaining part, as Thomasius says, received its shape at the Council of Trent. The organic character of development shows in the successive unfolding and natural sequence of the moments contained in the germ.81 There is first a movement from the general to the specific and the vague to the certain. But it also shows in the sequence of the main dogmas, first the Christology in determining the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, second the subject of faith, humanity in its sinfulness, thirdly the mediating of salvation, and finally the subjective appropriation of salvation up to its completion. These four topics show a sequence which determined the unfolding of dogma in history. For Thomasius it is the prerogative of the present time to work through anew the doctrine of the church, mindful of the ‘since then’ gained results, and thereby to recapitulate and deepen the ‘since then’ achieved results and bring them to a conclusion.82

While Thomasius discerned an evolutionary development with regard to the content of dogma, he notes a dialectic movement as to its form. He sees the immediate unity, the opposition, and the mediation in the essence of the Christian faith. Because the Christian faith is essentially mediation achieved through Christ between God and sinful humanity, it is a mediation of evidently most extreme opposites which, however, are united in him.83

In the individual dogmas too he discerns the opposites between infinite and finite, sin and grace, and freedom and conditionality. Even contradictions necessitate the church to move forward, not by insisting on being right, but to resolve the inner tension and find an inner unity. This he calls healthy progress. 81 For the following, see also Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984), 145–149. Hein compares the approach of Thomasius with that of von Hofmann and shows that von Hofmann pursued a linear concept of history while Thomasius showed that history did not develop just in a linear direction but also contained dialectical movements. See also Matthew L. Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History: The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 130–31, 246–53. 82 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:13. 83 Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:14.

118

Hans Schwarz

Yet the situation is different with heresy. Many times it necessitated the church to pay closer attention to a certain article of faith and to pronounce it more clearly. Yet a heresy usually represented a fragment of truth in such an extreme way that its victory would have meant the dissolution of the church. Therefore he objects to the thesis of Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) and his school “that heresy is a necessary phenomenon or that it is even the other side of truth, equal in status with the ecclesial dogma.”84 While Thomasius agreed with Baur and with much of the nineteenth-century thinking as to progress in history, the progression for him was christocentric. Any “heretical” deviation from this truth was not divinely sanctioned and therefore could not really contribute actively to any development. We must agree with Albrecht Beutel’s assessment that the approach of Thomasius marked a new epoch. Up to then virtually all other approaches treated each topic within a given period, but Thomasius conceived of the whole doctrinal development as an organic dialectical process which had found its provisional conclusion in the Lutheran Formula of Concord.85 Beyschlag also praises this concept but emphasizes that for Thomasius the organizing principle was the Gemeinglaube, the common faith which moved from the ancient church to the Formula of Concord and even used the respective heretical “errors” to advance this historical progression. History of dogma was no longer a boring account of names and ideas but became “a dynamic and vibrant ecclesial process of experience.”86 Claude Welch (1922–2009) called this history of dogma an important bridge between the work of Baur and Neander and that of Harnack. His new method was to seek the most vital question or questions for each period of the church’s history, and then to organize and interpret the dogmatic development around those questions.87

Yet already in 1886 Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) published the first volume of his history of dogma in which he followed a developmental concept. But he substituted the ecclesial common spirit for the “spirit of Greek antiquity.” He asserted that the claim of the Church that the dogmas are simply the exposition of the Christian revelation, because deduced from the Holy Sciptures, is not confirmed by historical investigation. On the contrary, it becomes clear that dogmatic Christianity (the dogmas) in its conception and in its construction was the work of the Hellenic spirit upon the gospel soil.88

84 85 86 87

Thomasius, Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte, 1:18. Beutel, “Thomasius, Gottfried (1802–1875),” in TRE 33:490. Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie, 97. Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, I, 1799–1870 (New Haven: Yale University, 1972), 227, n.73. 88 Adolf von Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma (1889), as excerpted in Adolf von

Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875)

119

Yet whether the spirit at work there was really Hellenistic was not that easily settled since Thomasius already noted that the national elements played a role in the developmental process. While the first volume of the history of dogma was fully the work of Thomasius, the second volume was published in 1876, one year after his death. His first editor, his former student and later his colleague from Erlangen, Gustav Leopold Plitt (1836–80), made hardly any changes, as he says in the preface. But in the second edition of this second volume, editor Reinhold Seeberg filled in several gaps. For instance, Thomasius had omitted any reference to the concept of doctrine in the Reformed and the Roman Catholic traditions. In some areas, such as the doctrine of reconciliation, important information had not been used. This meant that the volume grew from 446 pages to a stately 748 pages.89 Yet Seeberg did not change the intention of the author. He wrote in the concluding remarks: “It is not redundant to note that these concluding remarks essentially agree with what Thomasius himself has said in vol. 1, pp. 11f.”90 His fundamental concept of the history of dogma as an organic development and an unfolding of the faith of the church was persuasive for many, in part because he did not perceive this development as an external historian, but he saw this development at the same time as an unfolding of his own faith.91

In conclusion, it is difficult to agree with Albrecht Beutel’s assessment that Thomasius “remained a fringe phenomenon [Randerscheinung] in the history of theology of the nineteenth century.”92 As Beutel noted in the same place, Thomasius was important for the consolidation of the Erlangen School, since his work in outlining Christian doctrine and tracing the development of dogma was a significant contribution. “Thomasius became a central figure and an important representative of ‘Erlangen Theology.’”93 Moreover, in educating pastors, providing materials for religious instruction, and by preaching, he exerted a decisive influence even if most of it was restricted to his home state of Bavaria.94 Of course,

89 90 91 92 93 94

Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height, ed. Martin Rumscheid (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 110. Reinhold Seeberg in the Preface to Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1889), xiii, n. 1. Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, 747. Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 466. Beutel, “Thomasius, Gottfried (1802–1875),” 491. So, rightly, Renz, Versöhnung als Zentrum christlichen Lebens, 12. Peter Aschoff, Die Kirche im Leben und Werk von Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999), is certainly correct when he writes: “As were all his Erlangen colleagues and friends, Thomasius was a thoroughly churchly person.” His life and work for the good of the church as a theologian was his great achievement.

120

Hans Schwarz

he did not found his own school of thought. This would have mitigated against what he stood for. As Hermann Jordan concludes: Thomasius was effective by his faith and his unpretentious personality. He offered a theology which served as the foundation for the practical work of a whole generation of theologians in Bavaria and beyond.95

What more would one want?

95 Jordan, “Thomasius, Gottfried, Professor der evangelischen Theologie, 1802–1875,” 471.

Roy A. Harrisville

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

Biography Johann Tobias Beck was born in the city of Balingen, near Stuttgart, on February 22, 1804. His father, Tobias Beck (1778–1849), a soap-boiler by trade and member of the city council, initially opposed but then later agreed to his son’s education in theology. Upon successfully passing the so-called Landexamen at Stuttgart, Beck left Balingen for the one-time cloister-school at Urach, recently established as the Evangelical-Theological Seminary. There, Beck came under the influence of Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Köstlin (1785–1854), whom he regarded as chief among all his teachers and instructors. After successfully completing study at Urach, in the fall of 1822 Beck left for the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen as Stiftler, a student member of the hall of residence that was supported by the Evangelical Church of Württemberg. Early in 1823 he began to suffer a liver ailment, and in 1825 asked for release from the Stift, a release extended him for a year. In all, Beck spent only four semesters at the Stift, but by supplying through private study what he lacked in formal education, and on the basis of his performance respecting the examinations assigned him by the “Ephorus” at the conclusion of his time as student, he was recognized as a fully accredited specimen eruditionis, and in 1827 left the Stift with the grade of “sehr gut.” Two months after his exams, Beck was assigned by the king to a parish in the village of Waldthann, near the Bavarian border, and was betrothed to Luise Emilie Maximiliane Fischer. Two years later, in 1829, he was named Evangelical City Pastor and Senior Preceptor at the village of Mergentheim, some 60 miles west of Nuremberg. There he began his writing career. Among his first pieces were a monograph on Romans 9, an evaluation of Strauss’ mythical interpretation of the New Testament, notes on Hegel’s philosophy, and several sermons.1 1 J.T. Beck, Versuch einer hermeneutischen Entwicklung des neuenten Kapitels im Briefe an die Römer (Stuttgart: Carl Hoffmann, 1833); idem, “Bemerkungen über die Hegel’sche Philosophie aus Veranlassung der Göschel’schen Schrift ‘der Monismus des Gedankens,” Tübinger

122

Roy A. Harrisville

In 1836, Beck received the call to the University of Basel. A number of individuals in the city’s “voluntary academic society” had given donations, stipulating that they be used to acquire a teacher who combined scientific endeavor with faith and love for Christ. The group asked Christian Gottlieb Blumhardt (1779–1838), founder of the Basel Bible Society and co-founder of the Basel Mission, to look about in Württemberg for a theological docent who would meet its requirement. Blumhardt gave Beck’s name to the group, now formed as “The Union for the Furtherance of Christian-Theological Science and Christian Life.” It was then decided to petition three Tübingen professors, Johann Christian Friedrich Steudel (1794–1852), Christian Friedrich Schmid (1794–1852), and Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), for formal opinions regarding Beck. Baur wrote as follows: There is no lack of life and power in [Beck’s] exposition. On the other hand, it has too individual and subjective an imprint. Indisputably, the…author’s ideas would gain much… were he to succeed… in presenting them in a simpler and more natural form, and in developing them according to a more stringent method, in order thus to set the warmth and ardency of the Christian conviction more and more in a commensurate relation to the requirements of science.2

Subsequently called to Basel, Beck accepted the call, occupying the post of professor of theology from 1836 to 1843. According to Beck’s interpretation, the particular shape that his combination of scientific inquiry and faith should assume was to combat the theology of Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780– 1849). Renowned as a teacher, celebrated for having paved a new way toward Old Testament criticism with unusual tact and impartiality, de Wette was nevertheless faulted for an indeterminacy for which even his most faithful pupils finally deserted him. Beck, on the other hand, wrote of his regard and love for the man “because of his love for truth, his plainness, and modesty,” a man who “urged by inner obligation, arrived at a candidly critical, yet not personally hostile attitude toward modern pietism.”3 To professionally mark his status, Beck petitioned the Tübingen faculty for the licentiate degree, which was granted him with highest honors under Baur’s deanship on June 27, 1836. Two years later, Beck lost his wife, and in August of 1839 he was married for the second time, to Sophie Mathilde Märklin. Theologische Zeitschrift (1834); idem, “Ueber mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelian-Urkunden,” Tübinger Theologische Zeitschrift (1835); idem, Christliche Reden (Stuttgart: Chr. Belser, 1834). 2 F.C. Baur, letter of 16. März 1836, as quoted in Bernhard Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, Ein Schriftgelehrter zum Himmelreich gelehrt (Basel: C. Detloff ’s Buchhandlung, 1888), 176. 3 J.T. Beck, as quoted in “Lebenslauf,” Worte der Erinnerungen an Dr. Johann Tobias Beck, Professor der Theologie und ersten Frühprediger in Tübingen (Tübingen: J.J. Heckenhauer, 1879), 22.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

123

As early as 1841 he had been named as candidate for the position of full professor at Tübingen. Due to two vacancies on the faculty, division arose over who should be first to fill the one or the other. The faculty senate gave the nod to the “mediating theologian” Isaak August Dorner (1809–1894), and extended him the invitation to professorship, which he promptly rejected. Consequently, the Minister of Education gave the Rectorate the task of treating with Beck. In response to the university’s invitation to full professorship Beck replied: I am not concerned with the mere delivery of an already formalized doctrine of faith and a disputatious dispatching of its contradictions, but with the planting and establishing of a life of faith. That by conceding this standpoint I do not allow for a failure of scientific reasoning and justification, nor does the quest for wisdom come away emptyhanded, the public has recognized on the occasion of my writings.4

Accordingly, on November 16, 1842, he became Ordinarius Professor of Dogmatics and Morals, as well as the third mid–morning preacher (Frühprediger) at the Stift. Beck’s declaration of independence from interference by any external authority earned him comradeship with Baur. In 1841 the latter had already displayed impartiality respecting a totally other directed theologian when he gave Beck high marks in response to the Basel faculty’s inquiry. Three years later, in 1844, the two became enemies when Beck, together with Schmid and Maximilian Albert von Landerer (1810–1878), mediator between Baur’s “negative tendency” and Beck’s “biblical purism,” opposed Baur’s nomination of his pupil Albert Schwegler (1819–1857). The nomination quashed, Baur became a loner on the Tübingen faculty, without, however, losing Beck’s regard. The latter wrote of Baur that he could not reproach him for the direction he had taken. Considering that the teachers under whose authority they both grew up would never have satisfied an inquiring spirit, if God had not led him into the Bible, he might well have ended up with Baur.5 In one respect, Beck remained as great a target of the orthodox as Baur. His express declaration of fundamental independence from dogmatic tradition earned him the opprobrium of the Prussian orthodox North Germans. When the Evangelical Consistory sternly warned one of his students who had stated in a sermon that the gospel needed proclaiming throughout the heathen world, including Tübingen and vicinity, Beck asserted that it was necessary to maintain the freedom and truth of the gospel, “and not to allow the sermon to be made the done deed (opus operatum) of sheer obedience to views of Consistorial masters.” He continued:

4 Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 285. 5 Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 338.

124

Roy A. Harrisville

The evangelical church maintains that the scripture must interpret itself, for this very reason assigns it a perspicuitas, but under conditions by which no authority or majority of church members is named, but rather a calling from God, knowledge of language, precise scripture research (not mere talk from the chancel) and a distancing from preconceived opinions and perverse affects.6

The statement was “apostrophized” in an 1857 issue of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, a journal founded by Berlin University’s Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–1869), foe of all who contradicted orthodox Lutheran theology. The author fumed: What shall we say when on a rostrum from which all Württemberg theologians take preparation for clerical office there stands a man who enjoys the most universal recognition and who, totally without concern for the church St. Paul names as pillar and foundation of the truth, regards the historical church not only as a Babel, but even less, as a void non-entity, and allows merely the New Testament, but, nota bene, according to his exposition, that is, de facto himself, his individual person, to be the source of all religious knowledge? 7

Earlier, in an 1845 letter to elders of a Baptist congregation, Beck had described his position toward the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church. Their principle and meaning, he said, “was unconditionally based on Holy Scripture as sole norm, but they nevertheless required evaluation and improvement in the individual detail, a procedure entirely appropriate to the symbols and to be inferred from them.” “It is anti-evangelical,” he continued, to assign to a particular church, indeed, to certain individuals of a particular age, and precisely against their will, an infallibility and guardianship for all generations and stages of the church’s life, and to declare the content of the Word of God, inexhaustible in scope and content, as exhausted and settled for all time.8

In another “apostrophy,” composed by a Prussian pastor named Liebetrut, Beck was attacked not only for his attitude toward ecclesiastical hierarchy but also for a heretical understanding of justification, thus coincident with Roman Catholic doctrine.

6 J.T. Beck, as quoted in Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 361–362. 7 Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, no. 87 (1857): 956. 8 J.T. Beck, as quoted in Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 365.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

125

Distinctive Themes A. The “Organism” Throughout a number of his writings, Beck referred to the Christian revelation as making its way through world history. In his 1831 notes on Messianic prophesies, he wrote of the “threading” of a “higher divine order of the world through the entire weave of human life development.”9 He repeated the idea in an essay on Romans 9.10 In his Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre he wrote that for details of national history and the life of individuals scripture offers the most striking parallels, that the entire description it gives of the divine development of the kingdom is in turn reflected in the course of humanity’s development.11 In the two essays he wrote of revelation as progressive, that is, occurring in stages, analogous to growth in nature though superintended by the Holy Spirit.12 According to Beck, this progression was conveyed in “an organism,” or “organic gradation” established at the creation.13 As he wrote in his essay on Strauss, “[Christianity’s] revelation is not conceivable without an economy marked by the clearest articulation, an organic body serving and peculiar to it.”14 Beck also referred to the “inner growth of the kingdom of God,” or to the kingdom of heaven as “a living organism,” subsisting “in systematic form in the supernatural world, but brought down by Christ from above and organized on earth.”15 Or again, he could write of the revelation that occurred in and through Christ as an “organically reproducing or productive principle,” “a process of development and an organic system… in the on-going energy of the Holy Spirit.”16 It was this principle that guaranteed the unity of the already existing good and the divine, of 9 J.T. Beck, “Bemerkungen über messianische Weissagung als geschichtliches Problem und über pneumatische Schriftauslegung,” Zeitschrift für Theologie (1831), later printed as supplement to Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre (Stuttgart: Druck und Verlag von J. F. Steinkopf, 1870), 282. 10 J.T. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer (Part One) (Gütersloh: Druck und Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1879), 77. 11 J.T. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, oder Propädeutische Entwicklung der Christlichen Lehr-Wissenschafrt, Ein Versuch (Stuttgart: Verlag der Chr. Belser’schen Buchhandlung, 1838), 221. 12 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 243; J.T. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, trans. James A. McClymont, Thomas Nichol (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1885), 298–299. 13 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 212. J.T. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser, nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, ed. Julius Lindenmeyer (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1891), 221. 14 J.T. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” Ein Beitrag zu deren theologschen Würdigung, Zeischrift für Theologie (1835): 68. 15 Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 88 and 116. 16 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 263.

126

Roy A. Harrisville

the particular historical and the universal ideal, as well as the movement of the Christian revelation from out of its succession of stages toward the more perfect age of consummation.17 In his volume of nineteenth century Protestant theology, Karl Barth devoted eight pages to Beck, and in particular to Beck’s Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre. There he noted Beck’s advocacy of a “believing Gnosis,” a method requiring powers of observation analogous to those of natural science, and owning the Christian revelation as the highest point of a revelatory system marked by its uniting the new with the already existing good. According to Beck, Barth continued, the Bible was true to this organism of the revelation, having a body and a soul, thus rendering it the object of grammatico-historical exposition. Barth concluded: That the truth of the revelation must form an “organism,” a “tree of life” with root and growth of crown, and that it is precisely the genetic method that is the real one: this, and all the burdening of subject matter with this conceptuality–Beck in any event did not get from the Bible. They were the current pet schemes of a particular level of education at the time.18

Barth duly noted Beck’s distance from Hegel’s speculative method. He could hardly have missed it if he had read or heard of Beck’s review of “Der Monismus des Gedankens” by the Hegelian Karl Friedrich Göschel (1781–1861).19 In that review Beck had concluded that the Hegelian did not at the outset posit God as above and before all, but merely first or last in a logical progression; that it made being an object of thought, thought thus elevated to an absolute; that essentially independent concepts became abstracts of concepts; that human knowledge became absolute, the divine revelation a mere totality of its manifestations, not a self-revelation of God, and the personal Christ an abstract idea of Christian reality, not the monogenes.20 As for Beck’s use of the term “Gnosis,” the adjective appended to it (“believing Gnosis”) needed merely to be noted to free it of the theosophic. As for the term “organism” threading throughout Beck’s work, an alternative to the conceptuality noted by Barth suggests itself. For example, synonyms used of “organism” such as “life system,” “principle,” “plastic germ,” and above all 17 Beck, “Bemerkungen über messianische Weissagung als geschichtliches Problem und über pneumatische Schriftasuslegung,” 282–283. 18 Karl Barth, Die protestantische Theology im 19. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947), 569. 19 J.T. Beck, “Bemerkungen über die Hegel’sche Philosophie aus Veranlassung der Göschel’schen Schrift: ‘der Monismus des Gedankens,’” Zeitschrift für Theologie (1834): 139– 168. 20 Beck, “Bemerkungen über die Hegel’sche Philosophie aus Veranlassung der Göschel’schen Schrift, 167–168.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

127

“theocratic economy,” especially when described as “established at creation,” as “brought down by Christ from above and organized on earth,” however infelicitous, suggest dependence on a biblical view such as is reflected in Hebrews with its contrast between the heavenly and the earthly worlds, or in the ancient Jewish division of the world into two spheres (“this world” and “the world to come”), rather than on “current pet schemes of a particular level of education at the time.”21 At any rate, because Beck believed that this economy established its divinity with an immediate “apodictic evidential force,” evoking “the most radically different contrasts and reactions,” even in unbelievers,” it did not mean God had lost the initiative in the process.22 After the page which Barth read in terms of the organism’s accessibility to one and all, Beck wrote: The very thing it intends to prove exists would no longer exist if it gave to some stage of forming and knowing external to it the ability to judge or the competence to review its specific truth: this it must rather deliver itself through the spirit and power of its creating man anew all on its own.23

Barth balked at the idea of an “apodictical evidential force” of revelation, would have nothing of what Beck called the “divine” in man, ” a “medium” rendering it liable to the revelation, for which reason doctrines which allowed “the personal, transcendent and divine in men to lie fallow” could not be the object of personal appropriation.24 Beck wrote: Under the title of “unbeliever” are thrown those who believe in part, since they do not want Christ in his churchly dress or ornament, yet have taste for him in his simple seamless coat….It is necessary to make contact with what is truth for them…to show oneself at one with them, to waken in them the sense for the higher truth in Christ.25

Later would come a champion of that “point of contact” in Rudolf Bultmann. At any rate, if the emphasis on “organism” reflected something of a biblical view, Beck’s Tübingen inaugural of 1843, with its accent on reconciliation as its derivative, was reminiscent of Johan Georg Hamann’s choice of the relation between the two natures of Christ (the communicatio idiomatum) as his window to the world. Beck wrote: With its word of reconciliation Christianity developed a spiritual life that urged on the world the awareness that in its despised idiots the school and religion of the Nazarene accomplished what at no other could, that is, a shaping of personal life to which, despite all the apparent foolishness of its ideas, a moral freedom and fruitfulness is undeniably 21 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser, nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, 221; idem, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 116. 22 Beck, Einleitung in das System der christlichen Theologie, 161. 23 Beck, Einleitung in das System der christlichen Theologie, 162. 24 Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 120. 25 Cf. Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 314.

128

Roy A. Harrisville

due, a reforming of character and behavior; an earnestness regarding truth and a hallowing that make self- and world-denial a vigorous life-task; a moral intelligence and acuity of judgment that prove themselves superior to the ideas of the school or of the day; a piety and love for God which, for all its heaven and service of God, never loses sight of active fraternization with the real needs of humankind; in brief, a spirit that unites power, love and discipline, in which the divine, the human and whatever one has no longer fall apart in isolation, but by means of one’s purification of soul are reconciled in soberly taking a seat above or below; a humaneness that not only idealizes and waxes rhetorical over the divine but has within it a plastic power, lives in it as in the essential freedom and fullness of life, and is more and more conscious of it as wisdom most perfectly conceived.26

Was Beck forgotten because or because he did not fancy “the current pet schemes of a particular level of education at the time,” a level more concerned with “a formalized doctrine of faith and a disputatious elimination of its contradictions,” than with the “planting and establishing of a life of faith,” a task he aimed to seize hold of at the root? 27

B. The Bible According to Beck, everything in the history of the Christian Church, of “godly life, Christian spirit and Christian power” that still held sway, proceeded only from the New Testament scripture collection. The witness to Christ made known in the earliest community, the historical Gospel, was the standard by which the spirit of truth or of error was to be known. In the later parlance of orthodoxy, scripture was the norma normans.28 Further, scripture was self-authenticating, not, however, in any external sense. Rather, it led, Beck wrote, to the lost, inner basis for truth, to the conscience, where truth as highest judiciary makes one kneel, and prophetically points to the divine revelation of truth. From out of this basis, from the experience of conscience, scripture… develops a new inner life.29

As for scripture itself, the Incarnation furnished the analogy. The God-manhood must be reflected in the genuine, holy scripture. And although the humanity with which the Bible describes the revelation is the unmistakable word of God, it is not its humanity that needs first attention.30 “As little as I am able to recognize Christ in his true humanity unless he is first recognized in his divinity,” Beck 26 Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 287–288. 27 J.T. Beck, as quoted by C. von Weizsäcker in “I. Reden am Grabe, No. 2,” Worte der Eriinerungan an Dr. Johann Tobias Beck, 25. 28 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 219 and 259. 29 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 214. 30 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 251.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

129

wrote, “so little can I recognize his genuine witness in word and scripture, in its true humanity, until its divinity is first clear to me.”31 Scripture, then, had a body and a soul, the body relating to its linguistic and historically external aspect, and the soul to its “human inwardness,” or particularity. The grammatico-historical interpretation related to the body, treating the various sacred authors according to the laws governing the development of language and history, and the psychological interpretation related to the soul, explaining the biblical ideas in their individuality according to the laws of human psychic life.32 Both approaches constituted the genetic method, since each examined its object according to its place in “the progression” or “organic gradation” of the total biblical witness. As to the mode of scripture inspiration, Beck passionately rejected the view that only the ideas of the Bible were given by the Spirit, whereas the words were left to free choice. This, he wrote, was a lie at the basis of many an inspiration theory. The apostles’ own nous in its revelatory activity was dynamically (not mechanically or merely ideally) united with the nous of the Lord through the presence of the Spirit organically penetrating, ensouling their personality.33

Beck did not limit this ”ensoulment” to the sacred scriptures of the old covenant. In his interpretation of Second Timothy 3:16 (“All scripture is inspired by God”) he stated that “all scripture” could not be interpreted to read that every scriptural passage is inspired by God since verse 15 (“How from childhood you have known the sacred writings…”) referred to books, not to individual passages. The adjective “inspired” was rather to be taken as modifying “scripture” and the phrase translated to read “every inspired scripture is useful for teaching, etc.” Thus, what was said especially of the “sacred writings,” that they had the power to make one wise, was here expanded to read that “every theopneustic writing” possessed this power. For this reason, not only those writings known to Timothy from childhood but the new inspired writings as they then originated (the Paulines, the Gospels and Acts?) deserved his attention.34 According to Beck, the adjective “inspired” or theopneustic denoted writings in which the Spirit of God functions as “life-principle,” giving the Bible a “totally coherent effect,” giving it one sense and context.35 This did not mean the Spirit inhibited or excluded the biblical witnesses’ own development of ideas. Such a

31 32 33 34

Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 226. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 271–273. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 240. J.T. Beck, Erklärung der zwei Briefe Pauli an Timotheus, ed. Julius Lindenmeyer (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1879), 316–317. 35 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 275, 276, 279.

130

Roy A. Harrisville

notion reflected a dualistic separation of the divine and human.36 On the other hand, the word, content, and spirit of an author could contain more than “natural manner” might include.37 This was especially true of the Old Testament prophets whose own peculiar insight was far outdistanced by the meaning and language of the Spirit. Beck’s reading of First Peter 1:10–12 led him to write of the prophets’ “vigorous intuition” by which present and future were merged into a single concentrated view (“It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you”). Apart from this “intuition of Spirit,” that is, left to their own reflection, whatever may have been the object of that intuition could only appear foreign, alien.38 Analogously, Beck wrote, there are moments in our own experience when an author is carried to such an intuitive penetration of his object that he speaks of it with an uncommon pregnancy and weight of words which he cannot separate into its individual parts with his reflection.39 Where the Bible was concerned, Beck had no patience with talk of “saga” or “myth.” As for saga, it was opposed by the very nature of Christianity which thrusts from itself all that is fictional. Whatever of history or teaching needed supplementing or rectifying was supplied by the Paraclete.40 “Under his seal,” Beck argued, “no human fiction can arise.” And as for David Friedrich Strauss’ celebrated mythical view, “how,” he asked, “is this rooted in a standpoint that can be justified before the spirit of Christianity?” Heathenism was the undeniable origin of myth. Never in all its fantasy and speculation did it result in revelation, but only in a congeries of isolated theophanies and abstractions. Nor could it combine individual truths into a totality, much less reconcile truth and reality. The mythical approaches, ingredients of a subjectivity discontented with objective content were the “devouring cancer” adhering to the primary religious concepts of antiquity.41 In view of requiring an authentic historical document for its entry into the world as well as for its persistence, the spirit of Christianity would never have put up with such deception throughout the 1800 years of its history.42 On the contrary, at its very beginning Christianity possessed a power of reproduction coherent with its own peculiar nature.43 Beck wrote:

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 228. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 276. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 252. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 253; cf. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 262–263. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 67. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 65, 69, 76. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 78. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 74.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

131

On this metaphysical connection of word and scripture with the nature of revelation and the purpose of Christianity, taken together with the teleological faith in providence that follows from it, that the God of revelation must just as purposefully provide for its continuation as for its origin–on this rests… not only the proposition that “God’s word is truth,” but also that “the scripture cannot lie.”44

Obviously, “such a phenomenon” as this “scripture-organ” had to hide riddles in its “inexhaustible bosom,” inviting to deep and untiring research, but hardly to “hasty denial and suspicious trickery.” Writing that the Old Testament words and narratives were to be judged by the apostolic writings of the New Testament, Beck divided the New Testament texts into three descriptive stages of what he called the “theopneustie.” In its first stage, the “pisteo-dynamic,” the universal Christian spirit of faith was concentrated in “individual organs” for an authentic reproduction of gospel teaching and history. Such “organs” were the “apostolic Gospels.” The second stage contained the “charismatic,” the imparting of the power of the Spirit in extraordinary gifts. To this stage the apostolic letters belonged. “Authentic revelation,” apocalyptic, marked stage three of the theopneustie. To the extent that stage two, according to its “spontaneous” side, harked back to stage one and, according to its “receptive” side, reached toward the apocalyptic stage, the apostolic letters appeared to have the lion’s share of the theopneustie. In any event, the Holy Spirit was operative at every stage, gathering up whatever was given in a lower or preparatory stage.45 Writing early on that Christianity had least to fear from a soundly developed criticism,46 Beck insisted that it had to begin with the written text: Whoever would walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ as his servant, and for the kingdom of heaven gather with him and not scatter, must from the outset take a firm stand upon the divine word in its written form.47

Next, the exegete had to pursue the genetic method, that is, determine the sense of a given text within the context of similar texts and thus fix the particular stage that the text had reached toward the higher, common concept that all the texts together were made to serve. The Lord, Beck wrote, did not use scripture by wresting a text from its context, but joined text with text to mark out the narrow way of truth. Hence: It is not by the use of single texts that we find the sure limits right and left within which lies the narrow way, but only by a right observance of the rule—“Again it is written;” otherwise we come to grief over every text which Satanic exegesis starts upon us.48 44 45 46 47 48

Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 75. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 235, 243, 244. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestamentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 80. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 173. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 109.

132

Roy A. Harrisville

This science, of course, had to enjoy independence. It had to be free of “the spirit of literality” which assumes it responds to the divine witness by outward conformity, by legal forms of doctrine and life. The exegete was to repudiate inherited advantage, trust in religious privilege or ecclesiastical orthodoxy.49 Upon his invitation to Tübingen Beck wrote: I limit myself…to the confession that I see it as my sole calling in life, thus also in the Chair of Dogmatics and Morals, to be a biblical theologian and to cultivate the Christian science of education as laid down in the documents of Holy Scripture as an independent system, at least of equal value with those in vogue.50

If Barth’s reference to Beck’s view of the genetic method as “the real one” implied the exclusive use of that method, it was in error. Again and again Beck insisted on a supplement. He wrote of the revelation as requiring a “particular sense, not merely an empirical capacity for witness, but a divine formation of spirit and life.”51 Through separating method from faith their “innermost relation” was ruptured like a cadaver.52 Thus the first prerequisite for recognizing the divine power of witness in the Bible was “vitality of conscience.”53 Only struggle in faithful use of the divine means of grace could lay hold of the word of God.54 To this “innermost relation” Beck gave the name “pneumatic criticism,” and went on to describe its three principles. According to the first, the scripture’s own spirit had to be breathed into the spirit of the expositor. Such inbreathing occurred by faith, but by a faith birthed by scripture itself and its witness to “each open consciousness what is the Spirit’s sense of all senses and command of all commandments.”55 According to the second principle, exposition had to take up into itself the scholarly or hermeneutical in the narrower sense. Here Beck could go on at length to indicate the task of grammatico-historical and psychological interpretation in their relation to the “body and soul” of scripture. According to the third principle of “theological exposition,” the task of interpretation was to render the text as a whole and in detail with a “reproductive definiteness.”56 And all throughout lay the requirement of “the new life of the rebirth,” “the living, faithful knowledge of the truth in the word of God.”57 Thus, interpretation had to be “pneumatically determined,” which meant that exegesis was not to quench the Spirit with its empirical research, but to see how “the life-principle” of scripture 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 172, 177. Beck, as quoted in “II. Lebenslauf,” Worte der Erinnerung an Dr.Johann Tobias Beck, 24. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 224 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 225. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 227. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 230. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 267–268. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 267, 280, 281–282. Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 263.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

133

inspirits the external as well as internal side of its ideas, thus arriving at the “totally specific spiritual sense.”58 In a Good Friday sermon, Beck referred to what was lacking in current Bible interpretation: One imagines he has given scripture the honor due it when as from a paint bucket only the coloring is taken for the shape of one’s own heart, fantasizing with ideas for a holy vault of the spirit, exaggerated picturing for zeal for truth and forceful preaching; when… clerical blowing ofwind appears as noble knighthood, man-pleasing pliancy as the humility of love, self-loving or party-addicted rigidity as the decisiveness of faith, sly reckoning as wisdom and the like: there, bread and wine of the heavenly wisdom is made a swelling foam, an idle affair of words, for young and old all the more seductive in appearance and mendacious in nature.59

In his exposition of Romans, Beck wrote that despite what had been achieved in its interpretation within evangelical circles, much remained undeveloped, chiefly as a result of polemical tension and defense against Catholicism and mysticism, and also as a result of traditional dogmatism and formalism. Even expositions clearly distinguished by a Christian spirit, such as those of Spener, Francke, Anton, and Rambach, narrowed the sphere of the epistle’s view to a horizon related to the church of their time, forcing its ideas and their genetic progress into a formalized doctrinal scheme.60 To the readers of his work on pastoral theology Beck wrote: Don’t be kept from such a use of scripture for your personal satisfaction, by the notion that faith in the whole of scripture, a dogmatic or philosophical theory of its absolute authority and inspiration, is a necessary prerequisite. The conviction of the genuineness and divine character of scripture is formed in the spirit.61

Finally, according to Beck, what had been exegetically established had to be applied to knowledge and life. First, that application had to emerge from the text as a living member of the total “Bible-organism.” Second, conclusions by which the text was to be applied had to be properly based, that is to say, when particular truths for knowledge and life were derived from the content of the text. Third, what was human in the Bible, namely, its historical and psychological elements, had to be brought into connection with the interpreter’s own humanity. Fourth, application had to separate the general truth into whatever special truths derived 58 Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 275. 59 J.T. Beck, “Wie denkt man göttlich vom Kreuze Christi?” Charfreitags-Predigt, Mark 15:33–37, Neue Folge, Chriistlicher Reden (Basel: Gedruckt und zu finen bei J.G. Bahnmeier, 1842), vi. 60 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 24. Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), Paul Anton (1661–1730), and Johann Jacob Rambach (1695– 1735) were the principal founders and representatives of the Lutheran pietist movement. 61 Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 110.

134

Roy A. Harrisville

from it and attach them to the total living truth. By proceeding in this analyticsynthetic fashion each narrative arrived at its full significance in an individual truth, just as each individual truth arrived at its peculiar content by way of the living description of the narrative. The fifth principle of application read that a “believing application” of scripture involved the total person, a disposition that lived and moved in a betterment of self and the other.62 None of this guaranteed invulnerability. Early on, in his essay on Strauss’ mythical interpretation, he referred to the trial and tribulation necessarily attaching to the expositor’s task: As much as the thorough-going natural scientist despite all his erudition needs experimentation coupled with the most attentive seriousness, so little can the theologian for his growth, and despite all his meditatio do without tentatio, according to the oft used expression of that hero in theology who likewise knew how to produce a work built on the genuine granite of history.63

C. The Christian Faith In his essay on Strauss’ mythological interpretation Beck described the essence of Christian teaching as taking the unity of “teaching and life, truth and reality, idea and history for its alpha and omega.”64 Beck was insistent, in its history and its teaching Christianity offered salvation as one single and inseparable fact. Thus, whatever was factual in the life of Jesus had more than accidental value. It had essential and fundamental value, to the point that whoever attacked the details of that life attacked the teaching as well. Christianity had set this history and teaching under its own peculiar spirit, so that there could be no opposition between what was subjective, say, the teaching, and what was objective, the history, but rather a “real ensoulment,” by which the one was taken up into the other.65 Further, by means of its historicity Christianity purposed to take effect gradually, not, as was often supposed, to come into existence gradually. Only its secondary acts of revelation, its propagation and productivity occurred according to the laws of human growth and freedom. “It is conscious of itself in an absolute vitality according to which it is from the beginning what it should be and remain, divinely independent and consummate truth.”66 If insistence upon the unity of history and teaching recalled the right-wing Hegelian’s concession that the Absolute Spirit could achieve self-realization in a single individuum, any 62 63 64 65 66

Beck, Einleitung in das System der Christlichen Lehre, 287–295. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestasmentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 79. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestasmentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 70. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestasmentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 73. Beck, “Über mythische Auffassung der neutestasmentlichen Evangelien-Urkunden,” 73.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

135

notion of a move or an advance on the part of that “Spirit” toward realization was in shreds. In his exegesis of Colossians 3:1–3 Beck wrote of Christian faith as deliverance from the world’s spell and a being directed “toward a higher world.” He read the command to “seek” the things above as an activity “in the attractive power of the risen Christ,” and the command to “set the mind” on things above as seeking to arrive at what was not yet present. Contrariwise, setting the mind on things “on earth” spelled captivity to the material, fated for dissolution. The phrase “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” Beck interpreted in terms of a life not yet transitioned to the corporeal or visible, thus not yet to be described by tangible activity or visible ceremony.67 Behind it all there appeared to lie that same appetite for the spatial, for the division between “this world” and “the world to come.” Respecting the tenet on which all Christians agree, the Trinity of the Godhead, in his exposition of Ephesians 4:4–6 Beck was careful to distinguish the deity of the “one Spirit” and “one Lord” as in rather than next to the Father as the one God. Thus, he wrote: The numerical-theism of Father, Lord and Spirit as three coordinated essences, as a triple deity, is excluded by the “one God and Father,” not, however, the theism of essence, the independent unity in essence of Lord and Spirit with the Father.68

Beck continued that what was principal resided in the Father, the one God to whom Lord and Spirit belonged. This absoluteness was reflected in the threefold designation: “who is above all,” denoting the transcendent relation of the Creator —corresponding to the word “thine is the glory;” “through all” denoting everything as the means by which God is active and which serves that activity— corresponding to the word “thine is the kingdom,” and finally “in all” denoting the immanent relation of God’s power in enlivening and preserving—corresponding to the word “thine is the power.”69 Beck lost no time emphasizing the sovereignty of God. In his Good Friday sermon he wrote that when the apostles say Christ is made for us by God to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (cf. I Corinthians 1:30), it is not that we must first make him such by virtue of our own wisdom and tenderheartedness. “It is finished!” He trumpeted. “Take note of that—you need

67 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser, nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, 267. 68 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser, nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, 182. 69 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser, nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, 182.

136

Roy A. Harrisville

add nothing but that you believe and remain a believer all your life!”70 In his Pastoral Theology he wrote that people comfort themselves respecting violent deeds by saying “it belongs to history,” in other words will be recorded in the annals. But, Beck added, for those who know what God is and what the world is in relation to him this is the meaning: What is happening is already written in the divine volume, that even what is left by God to the freedom of the human will, even what is worst and most arbitrary, is so hemmed in and overruled that it must serve the divine plan of the universe.71

Thus, Beck writes, when Peter in Acts 2: 23 addresses the Israelites as having crucified and killed Christ by the hands of those outside the law (Beck’s translation: “Him have ye by Gentile hands crucified”) but at the same time describes Christ as handed over “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” this deed of violence is placed under the limitations of the free counsel of God.72 Nor was Beck shy about God’s “foreordaining.” In his exposition of Romans 9:15 (“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion”) he wrote that nothing is given the elect that he would have earned on his own, and nothing withdrawn from the non-elect that he would have justly deserved. In that phrase, “I will have mercy,” just requital, whose principle is “to each his own” (suum cuique), was contradicted by “something in God higher than mere retribution.”73 On the other hand, in his exposition of First Timothy 2:4 (“God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”) Beck challenged Calvin’s reversal of the sequence of the phrases in a hysteron proteron. Rather, wrote Beck, the first phrase (“God…who desires everyone to be saved”) is explained in verses 5 and 6 by the universal reconciliation carried out in Christ, and the second (“and to come to the knowledge of the truth”) in verse 7 by the proclamation of the gospel attached to it. This “unequivocal emphasis on the universal saving decree” and the “universal proclamation of the gospel mediating the same” definitely excluded the Calvinistic concept of predestination with its tracing of unbelief to divine decree.74 It is moot as to whether or not Beck on occasion reflected a certain penchant for universalism. For example, following his interpretation of Romans 9:17 and its reference to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (“I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth”), he writes that no justice can obstruct the free development of 70 71 72 73 74

Beck, “Wie denkt man göttlich vom Kreuze Christi?,” 10. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 336. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 257. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 120. Beck, Erklärung der zwei Briefe Pauli an Timotheus, 99.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

137

God’s plan and purpose, that alongside the revelation of divine grace the revelation of his divine power likewise threads throughout history. Then, he adds: Of course, as victoriously true as the description till now glorifies the revelation of God in its full power and absoluteness—it is not yet carried to the height of holy love, and the complete reconciliation of the divine thelein with individual antagonisms must first be accomplished.75

Similarly, encouraging readers of the Pastoral Theology to seek out “the children of truth who are honestly striving after righteousness,” Beck added in a footnote: A merciful Samaritan can take precedence of priests and Levites in the estimation of the Lord—a publican desirous to learn, earnest in his endeavors after self-improvement, may go before the Pharisee with his many prayers, alms, and offerings. Such people are of the number of Christ’s sheep; and even if they know nothing of Christ as yet, they will one day be brought into Christ’s fold.76

These passages may simply express the hope that “the reconciliation of the divine thelein with individual antagonisms,” or the inclusion in Christ’s fold of those who do not yet know of him, would ultimately occur by way of the decision of faith. On the other hand, there can be little doubt regarding Beck’s sharing the millennialism of many pietists of his day. Writing in the Pastoral Theology of the kingdom of God as spiritual, neither of this world nor visible, but with its proper seat and scene “in the higher world,” he continues: Only in the spirit does it have its hidden fellowship with believers here below, and so it is to abide till the kingdoms of the world come to an end, and in their stead the King of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus Christ, sets up His throne in this world.77

Or again, in a letter of comfort to a student quoted by his biographer, Beck writes: Those are to be declared blest who, at the outset of the great hour of temptation when falling away penetrates even to Christian ranks, are taken up into the heavenly encampment of the one and only Prince of Peace, in order soon to return with him for the great battle of redemption for the people of God on earth.78

Finally, Beck was insistent: Christian faith involved more than “being saved.” Three times in the Pastoral Theology, he stressed the point:

75 Beck, Versuch einer pneumatisch hermeneutischen Entwicklung des neunten Kapitels im Briefe an die Römer, 78 (emphasis in the original). 76 Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 52. 77 Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 211. 78 Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 323.

138

Roy A. Harrisville

Those fail to come up to His pattern who only set forth in stereotyped phrases the words Repentance, Faith, Kingdom of Heaven, or represent the last of these with dry logic or moving rhetoric, as nothing more than being saved.79

The Baptist, Moses, and the prophets, wrote Beck, were concerned about “help for their moral necessities, not about mere pardon or mere personal welfare which people call salvation.” To this comment he added the note: Why is it that people emphasize almost exclusively, with a view to faith in Jesus, this point, that he bears the sin of the world, and keep so much in the background this other point, that He is able to baptize with the Holy Ghost?… The traditional treatment is to represent the gift of the Spirit principally as nothing more than a seal of forgiveness and adoption…. The Scriptures, on the contrary, emphasize the new-creating and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit as the principle of all Christian sentiment and personal activity.80

Calling those who worked upon the desire for salvation alone “ignorant zealots,” Beck added that “while they thus work, the selfishness of the human heart is not only not cut at the root, but is even further encouraged.”81 This “desire for salvation alone” was twin to an antinomianism which did not cleave to God’s will but rather only or primarily to the promises. True faith, however, “tests every application of the divine promises by reference to the divine commandments…. In short, the keeping of the divine laws, the fulfillment of the sovereign will of God, is the first and the constant duty of faith.82

D. Justification If theologians to the north entertained suspicions regarding Beck’s orthodoxy, his interpretation of justification in Paul’s letter to the Romans only confirmed them. In his introduction to the epistle Beck stated that among Jews and Gentiles what they had and what they lacked aimed at a redemption that made one righteous (eine gerechtmachende Erlösung). This, Beck insisted, was the foundational idea of the epistle, and he took every opportunity to accent it.83 On Romans 1:16–17 Beck distinguished the “evangelical” forgiveness of sins from every other by the fact that it is the power of God connected with a positive effect, with a revivifying involving an ethical element and development.84 On the 79 80 81 82 83

Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 119–120. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 123. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 147. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 107. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 11; the adjective gerechtsprechende used in opposition to a merely declarative (gerechtsprechende) righteousness. 84 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 72.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

139

other hand, the identification of righteousness with an announcement of wrath or a declaration of judgment mistakenly derived the noun (“righteousness”) from the verb (“is revealed”).85 By contrast, the righteousness of God was given to be inwardly recognized and experienced, so that justification as a spiritual act occurred in the spirit of the believer.86 The following paragraph from Beck’s first edition of the Christliche Lehrwissenschaft is as rigorous a repudiation of the “traditional” idea as the Tübingen scholar ever wrote: It does the truth of Christianity poor service when the terms righteousness, to justify, and justification are taken in the most abridged sense instead of in the full sense of their natural meaning, and are reduced to a minimum such as to acquit. Even in view of men’s lax idea of justice… acquittal may not so totally and roundly be heralded throughout the world as a revelation or possession of… righteousness without causing an unbearable rant; especially when this righteousness, by its existence and effect, and the person to whom it is due remain so superficially related that they are only to be brought into rapport through a logical attribution, and the man is to be thought of as assumed and declared to be righteous without in truth having or receiving in himself anything of that which conditions actual righteousness. Christian teaching must not merely repudiate such ideas, unworthy even of a human form of justice, but by its own portrayal of the matter allow no occasion for it, but rather prevent it.87

The danger, then, lay in fusing “the new concept of righteousness” with the traditional legal and juridical idea.88 Beck hammered away: One does not become righteous through a mere being declared such.89 Justification is no mere judgment but a power of God by which soteria becomes the believer’s own.90 It is the human origin, and not the human possession of righteousness which the righteousness of God excludes.91 Thus, ”no one is reckoned righteous until, as a result of faith, the righteousness of God enters into faith.”92 As for the use of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17 (“as it is written, ‘the one who is righteous will live by faith’”), Beck wrote that the apostle would never have offered as scripture proof what traditional exegesis had put in his mouth, that is, that an alien merit is reckoned without taking the attitude of faith into account.93 The Reformers, wrote Beck, did not conceive justification in juridical fashion but “dynamically, ethically,” as is shown in Luther’s preface to the epistle. Moreover, in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon recognized no other justifying faith than that 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 79–80. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 79. J.T. Beck, as quoted in Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 376. Cf. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 16. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 84. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 85. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 89. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 89. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 95.

140

Roy A. Harrisville

by which we are converted, born anew, and righteous “from out of the divine nature.”94 Beck rang the changes on the theme in his interpretation of Romans 5:1; 6:4, and 7:22–25. Of Romans 5:1 he wrote that the relation of peace with hope is not mediated through a merely juridical stipulation. Objectively, a creation of love occurs to the sinner’s advantage; subjectively, this creation becomes a spiritual possession of the heart.95 Or again, the passage refers to a “concentrated essence of the righteousness of God” as present in a “concentrated nature, the heart.”96 Against the interpretation of Philippi Beck insisted that the eirenen echomen in verse 1 (“we have peace”) denoted something of the subject’s own, thus could not be declaratory.97 On 6:4 Beck wrote of the “life-energy” of the Father as causing the formation of the new life among the followers of Christ, thus of the “organic connection” between Christ and the believer, and in a footnote referred to the “radical act” of the crucifixion of Christ inwardly accomplished in the old self.98 Of Romans 7:22–25 he wrote that the highest result of the entire moral movement described from vs. 15 onward is that the believer gains an inner personality with the law of God within as one’s own.99 The theme was repeated in subsequent publications. In the Pastoral Theology Beck insisted that persons are by no means to be accounted righteous merely for Christ’s sake, but are to become righteous “after Christ’s likeness,” thus personally and practically. He referred to the damage done interpretation by a “onesided presentation of a so-called imputed righteousness” instead of an “imputed faith.” Giving a merely juridical idea of pardon first place resulted in treating repentance and faith as a mere guarantee for pardon, and in conjunction with works of Christian love forming a guarantee for salvation, in which the call to become perfect was spurned as a legal thing.100 Luther, Beck added, was obliged to bewail that he had been shamefully deceived through misunderstanding and misuse of his teaching, declaring that if he had to preach the gospel now he would take another line. “The wisdom of God and the life of God,” Beck wrote, “are something really divine in those in whom the wisdom and the life of God are attributed.”101 Finally, in his commentary on Ephesians 2:4–10 Beck wrote that 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 92. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 377. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 377. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 379. Friedrich Adolf Philippi (1809–1882), was professor at the University of Dorpat, Estonia, and author of a voluminous work on the Romans epistle. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer, 468–469. J.T. Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer (Part Two), ed. Julius Lindenmeyer (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1884), 36. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 145. Beck, Pastoral Theology of the New Testament, 146.

Johann Tobias Beck (1804–1878)

141

Christ was not only awarded or reckoned but put on, that being raised with Christ was not merely a figurative expression. Rather, the word that God had “made us alive together with Christ” and “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” denoted a divine deed of power.102

Conclusion Despite the attacks against Beck, which would continue throughout his life, he still received support from the Württembergers, who may have felt it would not do to move against Beck and allow Baur to go unchallenged. At any rate in 1876, from the rostrum he made this statement respecting the heresy charge: Personally I can allow for all the sniffing around for heresy; I have learned to bear standing alone and being judged on many points. I give what after faithful research I find established in the divine Word, in the face of unbelief as well as faith. On this point no human court decides, much less, since a thorough and unprejudiced testing of all my instruction on the basis of the whole of scripture teaching has not yet reached me…. I ask that you follow my analysis without bias or prejudice, and believe me when I say that from the outset I did not arrive at my conclusions from opposition to the church but rather from them to an unwanted opposition, since for me the principle applies: I can do nothing against the truth.103

Following the deaths of Schmid and Baur, Beck was for eighteen years senior of the Evangelical-Theological Faculty. He died on December 28, 1878. At his grave, Karl Heinrich von Weizsäcker (1822–1899), successor to Baur and later university chancellor, described Beck as the spiritual comrade of such luminaries as Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) and Christoph Friedrich Ötinger (1702–1782), as a “confessor who must precede the professor,” whose students numbered into the thousands, and who not merely shaped theologians, but birthed them. Weizsäcker referred to Beck’s stubborn sense for truthfulness which allowed him to pay little regard to forms and formulae. “Still,” Weizsäcker added: we have not merely to remember the teacher and educator of youth, but also the academician. If, on every occasion, he emphasized the insufficiency, indeed, the vanity of all human knowing, he did not mean that somewhere and somehow ignorance has a right and may be cultivated…. Within the narrower sphere of his science nothing was further from him than any artificial or arbitrary limiting of thought or crippling of his freedom.104 102 Beck, Erklärung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser,nebst Anmerkungen zum Brief Pauli an die Kolosser, 121–122. 103 J.T. Beck, as quoted in Riggenbach, Johann Tobias Beck, 378. 104 Weizsäcker, “I. Reden am Grabe,” No. 2, Worte der Erinnerungen an Dr. Johann Tobias Beck, 10.

Lutz Mohaupt

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)*1

Biography Adolf von Harless was one of the most significant confessional Lutheran theologians of the nineteenth century. Although he has not received the same degree of attention in the “history of theology” as have other Erlangen theologians, especially J.C.K. von Hofmann, the extent of his influence through his academic teaching, literary production, and church leadership was immense. His lectures were very popular. His major work, Christian Ethics, went through eight editions. He served in the highest church offices with great political influence. And last, but not least, he was a brilliant preacher. One could therefore regard him as an incarnation of what Schleiermacher called the “idea of a prince of the church,” namely, one who combines equally the “theologian in a strict sense” with the “clergyman” who “develops his capacities for service in church leadership.”2 Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless was born on November 21, 1806, in Nuremberg.3 He began his university studies in 1823 at Erlangen, where he

* Translated from German by Matthew L. Becker and Hans Spalteholz. 1 This essay is a condensed, updated, and slightly different account of those sections on Harless in my doctoral dissertation, Dogmatik und Ethik bei Adolf von Harless (Ph.d. diss., Hamburg, 1970). A revised version of this dissertation has now been published under the same title (Norderstedt: s. p., 2011). I am grateful to Elisabeth Kröger for her careful compilation of the relevant literature that has been published since 1970. [The materials in brackets are either the original terms used in Dr. Mohaupt’s essay or notes by the translators.] 2 Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen [Berlin: Reimer, 1810; 2d ed., 1830], 4th ed., ed. H. Scholz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), § 9 ff. 3 The life of von Harless has been written about many times. A classic study that is still worth examining is that by Theodor Heckel, Adolf von Harleß: Theologie und Kirchenpolitik eines lutherischen Bischofs (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1933). The most important sources are the anonymously published autobiographical notes by Harless, Bruchstücke aus dem Leben eines süddeutschen Theologen, 2 vols. (Bielefeld und Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1872/1975). For Harless’ important role in the mission, see Johannes Aagard, Mission, Konfession, Kirche: Die

144

Lutz Mohaupt

concentrated initially on philosophy and law but then soon on theology. After considerable searching he found the focal point of his own thinking through contact with the religious movement of spiritual awakening [Erweckungsbewegung]. Already in Erlangen he listened to the Reformed preacher Christian Krafft, a key figure in this spiritual movement, who had some influence upon him. But the decisive factor was his move to the University of Halle. That was where August Tholuck taught, whose commentary on Romans caught Harless’ attention. The heart of the student was to undergo a transformation in the hands of the experienced master that shaped his entire life. The scriptural passages of John 5:44 and 7:16ff. overcame him “like a shattering force.” He recognized how wrong was his striving for glory and praise from others. And in personal spiritual conversation with Tholuck he also experienced “repentance and confession.” At that same time the “saving truth of faith” opened for him an entry into the confessional tradition of his church: Only then… did I turn to the Lutheran Confessions of my church. I cannot describe the surprise and the emotion that came upon me when I discovered that their content conformed to that of which I had become certain from Scripture and the experience of faith.4

Harless returned to Erlangen in 1828, where he pursued an academic position. (He was fearful of preaching and thus did not want to go into the parish ministry.) In 1833 he was called to be an associate professor of New Testament exegesis. In 1836 he became professor of Christian morals and of theological encyclopedia and methodology. This was a crucial period in the history of the Erlangen faculty and beyond. This change was marked by the faculty’s inner renewal and by a reawakening of church and theological life.5 The most important sign of this turning point was the founding of the Journal for Protestantism and Church [Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche] in 1838. Under von Harless’ editorship, J.F.W. Höfling, F.J. Stahl, G. Thomasius and others worked together to create a program that would strongly oppose a church “…that wants nothing to do with Protestantism and a Protestantism that wants nothing to do with the church.”6 Accordingly, Harless and his associates were in agreement in their rejection of Roman Catholicism, but they were in even more agreement in their Problematik ihrer Integration im 19. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, 2 vols. (Lund: Gleerup, 1967), 2:710–23. 4 Harless, Bruchstücke, 1:185ff. 5 Compare with Gottfried Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen des evangelischen Lebens in der lutherischen Kirche Bayerns (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1867), passim. 6 So Harless in the foreword to the first issue of the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche (ZPK) in 1838, as cited by F.W. Kantzenbach, Die Erlanger Theologie: Grundlinien ihrer Entwicklung im Rahmen der Geschichte der theologischen Fakultät 1743–1877 (München: Evang. Presseverband für Bayern, 1960), 247.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

145

opposition to theological rationalism, because it promoted de-Christianization and made secularization into a basic principle. In contrast to such a program, Harless and the others wanted to maintain a “sanctum,” whose power seemed far from being exhausted: “That holy place which we have in mind is our Protestant Church.”7 In the spring of 1845 Harless was unceremoniously transferred (as a State Church employee of Bavaria) to the position of a second spiritual counselor in the consistory in Bayreuth. The reason for this humiliating shift was his position in the so-called “genuflecting controversy” [Kniebeugungsstreit] which rattled the relationship between the Protestant Church and the Bavarian state in the years between 1838 and 1845. On August 14, 1838, a royal order was issued which stated that in the Divine Service the military had to kneel during the Words of Institution and the Benediction. This order precipitated a debate into which Harless was drawn when, in 1840, the faculty sent him as its representative to the Bavarian Parliament. His conflict with the Bavarian Interior Minister (Abel) soon rose to almost record-breaking sharpness. The result was that Harless appeared to the government as a dangerous opponent who needed to be removed from his office. His election as vice-rector of the University was offensively and insultingly disregarded and, despite the unanimous protest of the faculty senate, he was transferred to Bayreuth. He did not stay there for long. Only a few months later he accepted a call to the University of Leipzig to lecture on dogmatics. He shifted his main area of activity and interest, however, more and more to the public realm. For on March 30, 1847, he was elected to the pastorate at St. Nicolai Church in Leipzig, where in his sermons he frequently and vigorously engaged controversial issues. In the turmoil of 1848, when various liberal revolutions erupted throughout Europe, he became a political preacher of the first order. He preached in the strongest conservative and anti-revolutionary terms. His sermons were both attacked and defended. They were always heard by a large audience, and they were above all published in large quantities and widely read. So much for “leisure reading” [otium litterarum]! The Leipzig years were a time of pure fighting. A revolutionary mob put Harless on the list of those to be hanged. Only by happenstance was his house spared from demolition. He did not confine himself only to words. When a barricade had been erected near his home, he helped to devise a clever plan so that the local police could overtake it. In February 1850 Harless was appointed vice-president of the Saxon Lutheran State Consistory, Privy Counselor of Church Affairs in the Ministry of Culture, and High Court Preacher at the Church of St. Sophia in Dresden. The position of court preacher included the right to visit congregations in the state church. 7 Harless’ foreword, as cited in Kantzenbach, 245.

146

Lutz Mohaupt

Harless made so much use of this right that this activity became the chief feature of his time in Dresden. In every locale he strengthened the Lutheran Church through the use of the Lutheran Confessions. He also frequently attended clergy conferences. Looking back on those years he could say, I have gotten to know the state and people of Saxony better in two years than I did the state and people of Bavaria in twenty, when I served there.8

That Harless returned to Bavaria already in 1852 was due in large part to his relationship with King Maximilian II. When the latter was crown prince and Harless was still teaching in Erlangen, they bonded in a mutual liking that approached a deep personal friendship. With a handwritten letter Maximilian now called the theologian back to Bavaria. On October 1, 1852, Harless became President of the Protestant Upper Consistory there. One of the first tasks of the new president was to resolve the conflict between the church government and Wilhelm Löhe, who had demanded serious confessional Lutheran reforms and had threatened schism. Harless succeeded in keeping him from doing so by making Löhe’s program largely his own and by seeking always to ameliorate the sharpness of Löhe’s demands. Harless also brought about a series of reforms: a new hymnal and a new order of worship; decrees on church discipline; individual announcement for Holy Communion and formal announcement of engagement before marriage; and the relevant duties of the clergy thereto. All of these reforms provoked a storm of protest, especially from the liberal-minded within the population of the cities. This protest damaged the position of Harless and even led to tensions between him and the king. As a result, his work in church leadership was widely viewed as entailing a struggle over the respective responsibilities of the church and the state. This conflict was also evident in the last two struggles he had to settle. During the process of establishing civil marriage in Bavaria he registered a sharply negative protest. And as a nationwide controversy broke out over reforms in the elementary school system, he struggled with all of his might to maintain oversight of the school’s spiritual instruction. Through these conflicts Harless became more and more isolated. He alienated himself from friends and relatives, many of whom had already died before he did. His political and ecclesiastical positions during his last years were shaped by his bitterness about the hegemony of Prussia and by his fear that the existence of the Lutheran Church in all of Germany was at stake. Afflicted by various diseases and after no little consideration, he retired on January 1, 1879. He died on September 5 that same year. In terms of his literary output, Harless first published an exegetical work, his Commentary on the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, which appeared in 1834. In 8 Harless, Bruchstücke, 2:151.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

147

this work he evaluated a wealth of previous literature on this New Testament letter. In 1837 he published his Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology from the Perspective of the Protestant Church, a document that was foundational for the rest of Harless’ theology. In 1842 his third chief work appeared, namely, the Christian Ethics, which went through eight editions, the last in 1893 (four years after Harless’ death). In addition he published a number of other writings, such as a critique of David Friedrich Strauss’ work and a polemical exploration of the Jesuits. Alongside numerous sermons and anonymously published autobiographical notes, there are still two other publications worth mentioning: a paper on “Church and Ministry according to Lutheran Doctrine” (1853) and a work on “State and Church” (1870).

The Encyclopedia The Encyclopedia of 1837 has become one of the “manifestos” of the Erlangen theology.9 At its center are three key elements which, in differing ways, have become characteristic for Erlangen “neo-Lutheranism”: an understanding of theological knowledge as an organic whole, the experience of spiritual rebirth, and the relationship between Scripture, Confession, and Church. Harless assumed that all individual theological insights are connected to each other in an organic relationship. He thus built on Schleiermacher, who was able “to construe the organic system of scholarly theology.”10 But Schelling, above all, stands in the background here. His idea of an organic whole of scholarship [Wissenschaft] has powerfully helped shape the thinking of that entire century.11 Every thought is “empty and reprehensible,” “a dead paragraph,” if it does not fit harmoniously into this living whole of that system. The basic presupposition of this notion “is the idea of the unconditional … primordial knowledge in itself, which—only by branching out in various stages of the developing ideal world— spreads itself out into the whole immeasurable tree of knowledge.”12 All knowledge is thus participation, sharing in the primal knowledge. Schelling also understood history in terms of this idea of organic system [Organismus]. When 9 Adolf von Harless, Theologische Encyklopädie und Methodologie vom Standpunkte der protestantischen Kirche (Nürnberg: Johann Schrag., 1837). Martin Hein identifies the dissertation by Höfling, a work by Thomasius on Origen, and Harless’ foreword to the first issue of ZPK as the defining documents of this theological movement. See Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1984), 58ff. 10 Harless, Encyklopädie, 17. 11 F.W.J. Schelling, Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums [1803], in Schellings Werke, 6 vols., ed. Manfred Schröter (München: Beck, 1958–59), 3:229–374. 12 Schelling, Vorlesungen, 237 (emphasis original).

148

Lutz Mohaupt

the primordial knowledge occurs in the real world, in that it is joined to the “element of the concrete,” then this is a “successive revelation of the primordial knowledge,” and it is “generally acknowledged that the actual becoming of an idea in continual progress… expresses itself as history.”13 In place of Schelling’s absolutely identical primal knowledge Harless set “the trans-creaturely order of things and its relationship to human consciousness.”14 This relationship, however, was not understood by him as it was by Schelling, since Harless stressed how it has been deeply disturbed by sin. Consequently, a human being’s taking part in the trans-creaturely order of things presupposes a restoration of the creaturely fellowship between God and humankind. This fellowship also opened up for Harless a new approach to history. For the transcreaturely order of things is not a domain that is independently grounded in the creaturely realm, but encompasses the world and history and is anchored in the divine will of the Creator. Given the restored fellowship between God and humankind, the idea of organic system allows one to view the world and history together with the will of God, whereby history is comprehended organically, though not undisturbed, as a progressing movement in service to the divine idea of the salvation of the world. Such a grounding of the concept of history in the idea of an organic system was frequently used in the nineteenth century in various ways.15 Thus the question, of course, arises: How and where does that necessary restoration of the fellowship between God and humankind occur, which also then ensures that the organic system of theological knowledge agrees with the trans-creaturely order? Harless responded as follows: This restoration took place long ago. It is a “fact” [Tatsache], namely, the historical event of the restoration of the original fellowship between God and humankind through Christ and his appearance in the world.16 This event is at the center of the trans-creaturely order of things. At the same time, it is the principle which constitutes the unity of the organic system of theological knowledge, which guarantees the truth of the beliefs herein formulated, and which thus teaches one to understand history, though deeply damaged by sin, as an organic development that proceeds in accord with God’s will, whose central point is Jesus Christ. This central event in Harless’ thinking, is now however by definition an accessible experience. For, while the original fellowship between God and humankind may well be restored in Christ, this fel13 Schelling, Vorlesungen, 302. 14 Harless, Encyklopädie, 25. 15 F.W. Kantzenbach, “Das Bekenntnisproblem in der lutherischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 4/3 ( January 1962): 243–317; Wilhelm Maurer, “Das Prinzip des Organischen in der evangelischen Kirchengeschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Kerygma und Dogma 8 (1962): 265–292. 16 Harless, Encyklopädie, 24.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

149

lowship becomes actualized for the individual human being in the experience of rebirth. God creates this fellowship. And whether that fellowship is “true,” the individual discovers always then when it becomes “true.” Thus Harless’ concept of experience comes into tension with Schleiermacher’s thought, which he explicitly criticized.17 Schleiermacher assumed that the “feeling of absolute dependence,” whose origin he wanted to name “God,” is “an essential element in human nature” [!]. That enters into dogmatics when the theologian develops “Christian statements of faith as expressions of Christian pious affections set forth in speech.”18 In the experience of rebirth as the restoration of the original fellowship between God and humankind in Christ, as Harless understood it, there can be no “talk.” This is a concrete individual experience, a specific “experience of the Christian subject,” but not as Schleiermacher thought.19 Harless’ concept of experience was indeed much closer to Tholuck’s understanding. In Halle Harless not only personally experienced that turn toward the right faith, but he came to a significant theological interpretation of this experience of rebirth. He himself stressed that compared to the influence of Tholuck’s personality, the influence of his theology was minimal.20 Nevertheless, that Harless’ understanding of the experience of rebirth was able to solve the problem of certainty in view of Christian doctrine was hardly an accident, given Tholuck’s understanding of it: The one who is reborn will be able to see “the teaching and life of Christ and of the apostles” and “all other teachings” and “truths of salvation” in a new light, without contradictions.21 Harless developed this idea by means of a penetrating investigation into the concept of experience and a richly productive systematization of it. To accomplish this, he had to set forth the organic system of theological knowledge and thereby show that it is grounded in the restoration of the original fellowship with God. But this is a task of New Testament exegesis. For since it is in the history of Christ and the apostles that, for Harless, “the final revelation of divine truth has been given” and since it is the New Testament that reports his history, the exegesis of Scripture takes on a fundamental significance: “Just as the history of Christ and his apostles serves as the basis for the whole of Christianity, so exegesis is the basis for the whole of theology…”22 This was familiar ground for Harless. He had 17 See Harless, Bruchstücke, 1:141; 2:15. 18 Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, 2 vols., 7th ed., ed. Martin Redecker (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1960), 1:23ff., 41, 105. 19 This has been alleged by Hein. See Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis, 83ff. At the same time he assumes erroneously that I view the experience of rebirth in Harless as a phenomenon that is generally found in human beings. That is not so. 20 Harless, Bruchstücke, 1:172ff. 21 August Tholuck, Guido und Julius. Die Lehre von der Sünde und vom Versöhner, oder: Die wahre Weihe des Zweiflers (Hamburg: Perthes & Besser, 1823), 225. 22 Harless, Encyklopädie, 29.

150

Lutz Mohaupt

made the greatest progress in the area of exegesis during his years at Erlangen, where he learned about Tholuck through his commentary on Romans. Already in 1834, in his very first publication, Harless referred to exegesis as “the basis” for dogmatics.23 In that way he thought himself to be an administrator of the Scriptural principle of the Reformation.24 He began with the sensus literalis of Scripture since biblical criticism has to bring the same presuppositions which one must bring to the investigation of every historical document, namely, the ability to make judgments about the external evidences for the fides historica of the author.25

The foregoing also applies to that event which stands for Harless at the center of all Scripture: the restoration of the original fellowship between God and humankind accomplished by Christ. Here, too, Harless distinguished between “presently announced speech” and “a real fact that has been handed down in tradition.”26 The latter, as the event of rebirth, is nonetheless also accessible as immediate personal experience. Harless can also call this way of confirming the truth of the Word, in polemics against David F. Strauss, “beginning to feel at home in history”: “Just as the church naturally seeks to arrive at an understanding of past events by beginning to feel at home in them…, so also this same historical observation serves the church to assure itself that, despite all counterclaims of would-be axioms, it was the fulfillment of God’s intention that has been manifested in Christ and proclaimed by his apostles.”27 Thereupon, however, the whole burden of being assured of the truth rests uniquely and solely on the experience of rebirth, even in view of the exegetical “basis” of the individual theological system. For, though one may establish that the report about the restoration of the fellowship between God and humankind in Jesus Christ is the center of Scripture, the question of the truth of this message must be answered in turn by referring back to this personal experience. How consistently Harless worked with this experiential-theological starting point shows itself in his attempt to demonstrate the compelling nature of the theological system by another route, a way which was to become most significant for Lutheran confessional theology in the nineteenth century and, to be sure, 23 Adolf von Harless, Commentar über den Brief Pauli an die Ephesier (Erlangen: C. Heyder, 1834; 2d. ed. [Stuttgart: S.G. Liesching], 1858), preface, xi. 24 Harless, Commentar, preface, v. 25 Adolf von Harless, Die kritische Bearbeitung des Lebens Jesu von Dr. Dav. Friedr. Strauß nach ihrem wissenschaftlichen Werthe beleuchtet (Erlangen: C. Heyder, 1836), 89. 26 Harless, Die kritische Bearbeitung des Lebens Jesu von Dr. Dav. Friedr. Strauß. 27 Harless, Bearbeitung, 91. Harless alluded to a statement by Strauss: “That’s not the way in which the idea realized itself, to pour out its fullness into one exemplar and to be stingy against all the others…” (D.F. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vols., [Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1835/36; 4th ed., 1840], here § 151, 2:709).

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

151

under the guiding principle of “basis.” Harless also assigned to the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church such a functional basis for the task of theology. To be sure, according to Harless, the doctrines of the Lutheran Confessions are part of the theological system and, like the Scriptures, they point back to the “fact” [Tatsache] of the fellowship between God and humankind which has been restored in Jesus Christ. But they gain their own independent function as “basis” in that they are the expression of a supra-individual experience which people have undergone. The Symbols are witnesses of a communal faith. In the course of Harless’ life this experience had happened to him, which he now described as theological knowledge. After his own experience of rebirth, he discovered that the Symbols spoke about the same experience. Other confessional Lutheran theologians came to the same conclusion, which they shared with others.28 Those who experience in their heart the restored fellowship between God and humankind thus find themselves bound to the consensus of the church fathers just as it is summarized in the Lutheran Confessions. In addition, this fellowship is itself rooted in the trans-creaturely order of things. For the goal of the Christian revelation is the founding of the kingdom of God. And when a person experiences the restoration of the fellowship between God and humankind, there this kingdom of God begins to spread out on the earth. Thus the following applies: “True Christian theology must proceed from the basis of an ecclesial, communal faith. Theology must seek to know the ground and essence of this faith and must return to it.”29 This basis for theology is laid down in the Symbolical Books of the Protestant Church. Access to this common faith, however, can only happen for the person who has experienced rebirth himself, and thus the argument advanced by Harless for tying together experience, the biblical Word, and the faith of the church remains finally based solely on personal experience. Consequently, Harless generally wanted to place all of the questions that arise in the discipline of theological encyclopedia, regarding the essence and truth of theological knowledge, solely in relation to the church. Religion has its own immediate certainty. The church, however, must constantly inquire after the truth of theological knowledge in order to be authoritative—or to become so again. Harless’ theological encyclopedia thus was meant to serve his ecclesial and ethical commitments. Toward those who had previously tried to write such a “theological encyclopedia,” he was generally positive: “But I am not aware of any such writing in recent times which has assumed the task of satisfying the needs for the Protestant Church.”30 These needs did not lie in the area of theoretical and 28 Compare with Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen, 245. 29 Harless, Encyklopädie, 25. 30 Harless, Encyklopädie, preface, xi (emphasis original).

152

Lutz Mohaupt

theological reflection, but – and this is the whole impetus in Harless’ thinking— in the field of ethics. The present needs deeds. Theologians have written long enough. It is time that the church takes action. In order to do that, however, it must first have made its existence relevant.31

Harless had already adopted this nexus of the matter [nervus rerum] under Tholuck’s guidance when he interpreted his rebirth experience as a conversion to the new ethical imperative. And long before that, the young student had perked up his ears beneath Krafft’s pulpit when the great revival preacher launched into the hortatory conclusion of his sermon. Ethical commitment had long been bone and marrow in Harless’ life and thought. The independent analysis of problems, however, led him beyond a purely individualistic starting point for ethics to the question of the church’s capability for action. Thus, despite his roots in Tholuck’s world of ideas, Harless distanced himself from Pietism and not only from Rationalism, because a consequent rejection of the church as an institution meant for him simultaneously a rejection of the church’s faith, which for the sake of the certainty of the truth is of fundamental significance. Thereby, for Harless, this faith in action also provides the basis for practical ethics. For the organic system of theological knowledge contains “the truth concerning the essence of God and the nature of human beings.”32 On this basis one can then undertake the ethical task in the strict sense, the practical realization of this truth. Through the dogmatic loci the orders [Ordnungen] established according to the will of God the Creator have become certain. “The essence of Christian ethics (rests) therefore in Christian dogmatics.”33 The central question in ethics is therefore: How can human beings fulfill the discerned will of God? Can this in fact ever be done? Harless answered this question also with experience. It not only brings assurance of the truth, but in rebirth the person also receives “the power of the grace that brings about redemption.”34 This grace helps the regenerated person to do what he or she should. A brief look into the Christian Ethics indicates that the key concept speaks about the “fulfillment [πληρῶσαι] of the orders of creation [Schöpfungsordnungen].”

31 32 33 34

Harless, Encyklopädie, preface, xiii. Harless, Encyklopädie, 24. Harless, Encyklopädie, 32. Harless, Encyklopädie, 42.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

153

The First Edition of Christian Ethics Christian Ethics, which was published in 1842, moves entirely in the well-worn paths of previous “encyclopedias.”35 The organic system of theological knowledge, which is based on the Scriptures and has as its center the historical action of God in Christ, receives its certainty in the subjective experience of the restored fellowship between God and humankind in Christ. While ethics addresses the consequences of this experience in the life of the Christian, to begin with, it must make clear that certain fundamental orders and moral demands are already givens also for the natural human being ever since Creation. The natural person knows about them in his conscience. Harless here fell back upon a substantive conception of the imago Dei: Because that divine substance dwells in the human conscience, whereby the nature of the human being is similar to that of God, already for that reason alone the human being has also an awareness of the true and the good.36

The conscience demands the subordination of the self and the world to God and to the true norm of life. At the same time, however, there is in the human being the “consciousness of falsehood and evil”;37 indeed, the Thou shalt…, through which God addresses us in our conscience, testifies that the whole personal direction of life has turned to a goal different from the one given in the conscience.38

This was Harless’ way of setting forth his interpretation of the dogma of original sin. The conscience thus is always under threat of being clouded. Against this danger only one thing can help: “an historical manifestation of the divine law.”39 In this law revealed to the people of Israel at Sinai one finds the ethical norms that are also found in the conscience, as well as additional demands. Above all, the law is independent of human fluctuations and ambiguities. The individual on his own is incapable of overcoming this conflict between the law and himself. For even if he was able to make himself meet the demands of the conscience and the law flawlessly, that wrong personal direction of life would still 35 Adolf von Harless, Christliche Ethik (Stuttgart: S.G. Liesching, 1842; 8th ed. [Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann], 1893). Between the first edition and the fifth (1853; reprinted in 1860), Harless introduced only minor changes that need not be examined here. Citations will be from either the third edition (1845) or the sixth (1864). The sixth edition has been translated into English by A.W. Morrison and William Findlay as A System of Christian Ethics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1868). 36 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 24. 37 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 27. 38 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 30. 39 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 41.

154

Lutz Mohaupt

remain in force. In such a situation the doer has done a deed that is good in itself but he is still not good. His works should however be an outgrowth of his goodness, not the effects of the demanding law. What would be demanded is a “unity of the heart with the will of God in the law,”40 a “heavenly mindset.”41 Yet in this way there arises a deep longing to overcome that internal conflict between the law and conscience. Harless has said: conscience and positive law drive the individual into a terrified fear, “which is the end of hope.”42 In a theological sense, the opposite concept of the law is the gospel. It is a new “life principle” which, through rebirth, can replace the ungodly mindset with a “heavenly mindset,” whose “fundamental effects” are faith, love, and hope. Whoever has this mindset lives in a “process of refining.” With the power of redemption he can wrestle “against the sin of his natural life.”43 Thus Christian ethics sanctions, completes and corrects the general ethical rules given all human beings in conscience and the law. Christian ethics does not entail “constituting human life wholly anew in one’s substantive relationships, but it nonetheless provides a mirror of that new spiritual principle which has penetrated and transfigured the natural form of the old human life.”44 The “what” of Christian activity is not essentially different from what also moves the natural human being who acts rightly. Rather, the difference resides in “how” the Christian is to live “within” those norms in order to fulfill them. The distinguishing concept that Harless identified as the criterion for what makes an action “Christian,” is the term πληρῶσαι: It is all about the right fulfillment of the previously established norms in creation as they encounter one in both the conscience and the law. The ability to do that is given in the gospel. Merely as a word by itself, however, it would remain only a legal demand to the human being: “The Gospel written as word [emphasis added], considered simply as word, thus has the same meaning as the demanding and directing will of God in the Word.”45 The conversion of a mind can only occur on the basis of that action of God which has occurred in the person of Jesus Christ. Its revelation to all the world, however, is this fact in the word of the gospel. Harless thus here understood that this word is initially only informative proclamation. It indeed proclaims “the fact and history of salvation”46 and promises “rebirth, adoption, and the power of faith from the fountain of the eternal wellspring.”47 But were it to remain mere word, it could not 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 60. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 75; 77. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 61ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 76ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 5ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 68. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 68. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 120.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

155

be distinguished fundamentally in its effect on the hearer from the word of law. Harless can say pointedly elsewhere: “The actual redemption is the act of God, not the word.”48 But the gospel is intended to be “not merely word, but also power.” As “the mediator of a gracious spiritual fellowship of God with men,” the gospel plants that new life-principle in a person, a principle that fundamentally changes the mindset that brings forth and carries the person’s actions.49 Now if a person “with perfectly free self-awareness receives rebirth through the Spirit of God and bears witness to it,” then one can speak, said Harless, about “conversion,” a conversion in which, through a person’s free act, rebirth becomes that person’s “own personally confessed and affirmed possession.”50 The freedom that is here presupposed is gifted by God to the person in the act of rebirth. If he accepts, then he “possesses” salvation. Harless was clearly working hard at this point to distinguish his perspective from that of the Lutheran Confessions and yet at the same time to grant them validity in that, namely, a person must be “strictly passive” in conversion and that “conversion be by God alone” [conversio solius Dei]. This problem comes to a head when one considers the duration of conversion. For the convert has to turn constantly and ever anew from evil and toward the good. Precisely this is the “defining characteristic of the duration of conversion.”51 If the conversion is at the same time the condition for preserving the possession of salvation, then it follows that “the personal spiritual struggle to maintain possession of salvation” is the constant state in which the Christian finds himself.52 He constantly has to renew himself, sanctify his will, purify his heart, in short, to guard that heavenly mindset which the rebirth awakened in him. Given the temptations to sin and the demands of the law, this would be a hopeless challenge if people were left to fend for themselves. However, this is not the case. Through the Spirit of the rebirth a person receives the summons and the strength to freely overcome evil through the power and grace of God.53

God’s grace bestows liberation from the bondage to sin and the power to fulfill the will of God.

48 Adolf von Harless, Dogmatik, lectures delivered by Prof. Dr. Harleß between Easter 1846 and Easter 1847 and copied down by C.A. Zezschwitz (Archive of the Erlangen University Library), Manuscript Number 2077, here 318ff. 49 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 82. 50 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 87ff. 51 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 92. 52 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 96. 53 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 92.

156

Lutz Mohaupt

While, on the one hand, the reborn person is given enlightenment, sanctification, and salvation by the Spirit of grace, at the same time that person, as one who has been converted, works at the enlightenment of his knowledge, at the sanctification of his will, and at working out his salvation in his own actions.54

The human being as a cooperator with God in respect to his own salvation! His field of operation is the battleground upon which the old being and the new being fight, upon which the human being fends off “attacking sins” by means of “the power [Macht (Potenz)] of his sinlessness.”55 The Christian is constantly struggling and being tested. He is tempted and could lose God’s grace. But he can also prevail with the help of grace and under the influence of the inner working of grace.56 Against the potential charge of semi-Pelaganism at this point, Harless tried to defend himself with the rather unconvincing argument that it is important just at this point, to emphasize that the key ethical factor rests on the personal ability and activity of the born-again individual. That this ability and activity rest on divine gift and grace and can only be thought of in a constant relationship with this gift and grace, is knowledge that is taught in the very nature of rebirth itself.57

What is at stake in this battle within the regenerated person can only be fully appreciated, according to Harless, when one takes into account the comprehensive horizon of the world and its history. The reborn individual has, after all, been transferred into the kingdom of grace. That serves as the basis of a new set of communal relationships among human beings. And this set of communal relationships in the fullness of its earthly and other-worldly relations is comprehended in the revelation of the worldwide kingdom of God. Salvation and the kingdom of God are interchangeable concepts.58

Harless thought, to begin with, about the kingdom as the future, eschatological goal of history. But the kingdom of God has already begun, and it is continuing to grow in the kingdom of grace, which may be called the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God on earth or the community of the kingdom. Its form of life is the church. But another kingdom must be distinguished from it: There is for the Christian not only a kingdom of grace, … but he also recognizes a kingdom of God the Creator in nature and history, in earthly and bodily relationships, as well as in the earthly-spiritual talents of human beings, whose actions in life have a

54 55 56 57 58

Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 96. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 101. The word in parentheses was put there by Harless. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 104, 107, 112. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 118ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 68.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

157

different motivating principle than the one that comes from the Spirit of grace that gives rebirth.59

Therefore the person who is reborn is entangled in a vast struggle that encompasses all of nature and history. He is aware that “the kingdom of Christ stands over against the kingdom of the devil and that his own struggle is only part of a larger world struggle, a struggle against trans-human principalities and powers.”60 This fight was necessary because through the fall into sin that evil principality that came into the world has disordered and endangered the organicteleological historical process. The “kingdom of the devil” is thus strictly speaking not a separate kingdom but a depravation of the kingdom of creation and a disordering of the orders of creation. Despite Harless’ occasional remarks about the “kingdom” of the devil, it finally remains a matter of conflict between the two kingdoms, namely, the kingdom of creation (endangered by evil) and the kingdom of glory (already dawning as the kingdom of Christ and grace and awaited in its fulfillment).61 The foregoing leads to a fundamental distinction in ecclesiology: On the one hand, the church is the goal of revelation. It belongs to the trans-natural order of things and is the dawning of the kingdom of God on earth. This true church however is hidden; it is an article of faith, for it is present only in the hearts of people who belong to the kingdom of Christ. Harless was thinking here of the concept of the communio sanctorum, and thus he took up the line of thought which he had begun in the Encyclopedia with his reflection there on the ecclesial symbols as articulations of the experiences of community. On the other hand, the church stands in the series of “earthly models for how life is to be normed before God and it exists within the manifold ways in which the divine governs the world,” and it is furthermore one of the “concrete forms of earthly, divinely ordered community.”62 It assumes its concrete form on earth in the “church life” (Kirchentum) of the time. The distinction between “church” [Kirche] and “church life” [Kirchentum], which Harless developed and clarified over the years, is rooted in his teaching about the several kingdoms. There are conclusions to be drawn from this same teaching also for ethics: the Christian participates in the struggle in which God, through the fulfillment of his 59 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 136. 60 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 101. 61 U. Rieske-Braun has rightly described this as “the basic polarity” in Harless. Nevertheless, even in his dogmatic lectures of 1846/47 he described this polarity quite differently by means of three (!) verbal expressions. See U. Rieske-Braun, Zwei-Bereiche-Lehre und christlicher Staat: Verhältnisbestimmungen von Religion und Politik im Erlanger Neuluthertum und in der Allgemeinen Ev.-Luth. Kirchenzeitung (Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1993), 71 (footnote 50). We need not solve this problem here. 62 Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 235.

158

Lutz Mohaupt

original plan (for the divine idea of the salvation of the world), brings forth his kingdom of glory, whereby this plan succeeds in pushing its way forward against the dangers within the organic historical process (the “kingdom” of the devil, sin). At the same time it must be the primary concern of the Christian in all ethical realms to remain what he became through his rebirth: having the complete image of God restored into the original fellowship with God and thereby belonging to the kingdom of Christ. The personal ability that the reborn person has to maintain Harless discussed under the concept of Christian virtue. And the most comprehensive virtue of all is faithfulness. The first task of the Christian must of course be the preservation of salvation that has been received. From this develop the other virtues: gratitude for the salvation that has been received, vigilance and prayer as a means to preserve faithfulness, conscientiousness in all doing and refraining from doing.63 Because, according to Harless, the goal which Christian virtue serves is ultimately the Kingdom of God, the full “scope of Christian virtue” embraces nothing less than heaven and earth. For “there is nothing in earthly human existence in which the born-again person—in the company of the converted—is not to be active in the love worked by the Spirit of God in a conscientious and grateful faithfulness.”64 The activity of thankful faithfulness was thus for Harless the central concept of Christian ethics, and the framework in which Christian virtue has to operate in the sense of this πληρῶσαι includes the predefined orders of marriage (family), state, and church.65

The Second Edition of the Ethics The numerous new editions of Harless’ Ethics do not differ from each other in their starting point, but the work grew in leaps and bounds to be twice its original size. The underlying reason for this was due in no small way to Harless’ intense encounter with Luther’s writings. As a student, he had already become acquainted with Luther’s Bondage of the Will and the collection of his sayings entitled, The Wisdom of Luther. In those days, however, the influence of Luther on Harless was not very extensive or deep. According to Harless himself, “Only much later did the works (of Luther) become an inexhaustible source of strength and refreshment.”66 We can identify more specifically when this occurred. In the first three editions of Ethics (1842–1845) there is apparently no direct reference to Luther, not even a quote from him. The fourth edition of 1849 was expanded 63 64 65 66

Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 120ff., 127, 131ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 135. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 238ff. (253ff.), 263ff., 275ff. Harless, Bruchstücke, 1:187.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

159

and revised, and now suddenly issues in a wealth of quotes from Luther, based on the Walch edition. During the years he worked on the fourth edition Harless must have been doing intensive study of Luther. Nevertheless, he merely cited Luther’s well-known statements here (as elsewhere) and in accord with well-established views about the Reformer.67 That would change. Indeed Ethics was reprinted in 1855 and 1860 with no changes. Meanwhile, however, Harless published eighteen theses on “Church and Ministry according to Lutheran doctrine” (1853) and added pertinent statements by Luther to each thesis. He began emphatically with Christology and an understanding of the Word that shows a significant shift in emphasis from the earlier work. “In the controversy over the doctrine of the church and the office of ministry [Kirche und Amt] one must not begin with the church, the office, spiritual priesthood, etc., but with Christ and the way of salvation, in which the Holy Spirit does his work on earth … and builds the kingdom of Christ. That leads first of all … to the Word of the gospel… What Luther said is indeed certain: ‘The Word is the only bridge and path through which the Holy Spirit comes to us.’ … That is the ‘physical or scriptural Word, set in letters,’ whether it is first preached and heard or read and contemplated. Where this Word is and where it is effective, there is the Holy Spirit and the effects of the Spirit, and where the Spirit is effective, there is the church.”68 Harless must have thoroughly read Luther’s writings in the following years. When the sixth edition of the Ethics appeared in 1864, it had grown to twice the size of the previous edition. This growth comes not only from a flood of Luther citations but also from shifts in position that are clearly due to the influence of Luther.69 One cannot exclude the possibility that Harless’ reception of Luther was impacted also by the first volume of Theodosius Harnack’s book, Luther’s Theology, which appeared in 1862, two years prior to the important sixth edition of Ethics.70

67 Friedrich Wilhelm Winter has reviewed and confirmed this observation about both Harless’ sermons and his other publications. See Friedrich Wilhelm Winter, Die Erlanger Theologie und die Lutherforschung im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1995), 40. 68 Adolf von Harless, Kirche und Amt nach Lutherischer Lehre (Stuttgart: S.G. Liesching, 1853), 1ff. W. Winter confirms the importance of this document. It is “a precursor to a truly historic confrontation with Luther’s ecclesiology and his public doctrine” (W. Winter, Die Erlanger Theologie, 47). 69 Robert Schultz has drawn attention to this fact. See Robert C. Schultz, Gesetz und Evangelium (Berlin: LVH, 1958), 105ff. F.W. Winter has meticulously checked, confirmed, and supplemented the following observations. See Winter, Die Erlanger Theologie, 48–57. 70 Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versöhnungsund Erlösungslehre, 2 vols., new edition, ed. Wilhelm F. Schmidt (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1927). Robert Schultz believes it is “possible” that Harless had “the sound of Harnack’s language in his ear,” and points out that the 4th edition of the Ethics was reprinted in 1860 (unchanged) and the sixth edition was published in 1864. That sixth edition had to have been

160

Lutz Mohaupt

The close contact between Harnack and Harless, in fact their personal friendship, makes likely that Harless took careful note of Harnack’s study. The latter’s interpretation of Luther has been labeled “the two spheres type.”71 The starting point is “God in his two-fold relationship to the world, outside of Christ and in Christ.”72 Harnack held that even the wrath of God is objectively real and an independent reality. It is grounded in the very nature of God himself. Following Luther’s distinction between God hidden and God revealed, Harnack differentiated between God’s relationship to the world within the revelation of grace in Christ and God’s relationship to the world outside of Christ, which is based on God’s majesty and is to be understood in terms of the justice and the wrath of God. Because of sin, the whole world is under God’s wrath, is in the kingdom of the devil, and under the power of death. Harless echoed such themes in the sixth edition. Whether there was a direct influence between Harnack and Harless, and from which to which, one cannot say conclusively. In any case, in the sixth edition, Harless made explicit reference to Harnack’s interpretation of Luther precisely there where it led him to a significant change of position, namely, in his understanding of the conscience.73 Now as ever, the conscience still accuses above all the false mindset of human beings. But prior to that change, “conscience” for him implied something that cannot be derived from human nature.74 Harless however now no longer spoke of a “divine substance” that dwells in the conscience of human beings, whereby they have an “essential likeness to God.75 Therefore the conscience also no longer provides an immediate “insight into the true norm of life, the knowledge of true morality,” as Harless had earlier claimed.76 Harless thus opposed Franz Delitzsch, who, on the basis of Romans 2:14ff., had assumed that the Decalogue was inscribed on the heart of all human beings. But Harless cannot get away from the difference between “law” [νόμος] and “works of the law” [ἔργα

71 72 73

74 75 76

drafted in 1863 or even 1862. The first volume of Harnack’s book on Luther was published 1862. See Schultz, Gesetz und Evangelium, 106ff. Otto Wolff, Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938), 63. Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 31. On page 607 of the sixth edition of the Ethics Harless refers explicitly to expressions by Harnack about the conscience that one finds in the latter’s study of Luther (see Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 78ff.). Harless wrote on that page: “For the point about Luther stated here, see generally the expressions of Luther on the conscience that are found in Harnack’s book, Luthers Theologie, etc…” Solely on the basis of considerations of chronology, U. RieskeBraun emphasizes Harnack’s distinctive influence “on the first edition of the Christliche Ethik” (U. Rieske-Braun, Zwei-Bereiche-Lehre, 73 [footnote 58]). That may be the case. It is different with the sixth edition. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 64. So it was still with the third edition. See Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 24. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 21.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

161

τοῦ νόμου]: namely, that the work of the law, i. e., its accusing and judging, is written into the heart of human beings. This passage in the Letter to the Romans knows just as little about a Decalogue indelibly inscribed on the hearts of the Gentiles as the history of the world of the Gentiles knows, especially regarding the first table of the law.77

At just this point in his exegesis of Paul, Harless gained insight into the sociohistorical embeddedness of human beings. The natural man is … never situated merely as a single human being. He is a member of a household, a member of a nation/people [Volk], and in all these relationships he is not merely a child of nature, but also a child of history. In the course of his moral life these relationships do not concern merely himself, but they are conditioned by historical developments and by established socio-ethical norms of human life.78

The reference to historically developed moral standards in human life was new to Harless. This raises the question, then, whether a knowledge of God’s eternal norms can be attributed to the human conscience at all, once one acknowledges its historical and social conditioning. Harless answered: The conscience of human beings was originally intended to be a depository of divine norms. But human beings struck this Word of God from their memory, and their inclination was now turned toward what God did not want.79

The contradiction between his theology of the orders of creation and the knowledge of the historical and social embeddedness of human beings is thus resolved with the help of the concept of sin. In that way Harless drew the appropriate conclusions for his assessment of human beings and their situation before and outside of revelation. In the third edition of Ethics he put it still in these terms: “The longing for a solution to the discord between God and humankind—the conscience and, in a special way, the law of the Old covenant being the divine provision for awakening this longing— contains within itself a certainty for its resolution.”80 This section in the sixth edition was modified: “The solution to that discord between God and humankind, a discord about which our conscience and the law of God convict us, is and cannot (!) be considered a fact of the natural human consciousness. For even (!) if that longing does not rest merely on the subjective feeling of human want and misery, but rests also on the objective basis of every preparatory revelation, nevertheless the consciousness of its fulfillment does not run parallel to the 77 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 73 (against Franz Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologie, 2d ed. [Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1861; the first edition was published in 1855]). 78 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 115. 79 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 123. 80 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 66.

162

Lutz Mohaupt

historical tracks of this longing.”81 Harless apparently recognized the danger that lay in the view he had earlier set forth. “Many talk as if the longing of human beings for redemption already contains within itself the guarantee of its fulfillment.”82 By contrast: It is unthinkable that the wrath of God could be averted by human beings themselves, since they lack complete authority to do anything for their salvation. Consequently, given this deeper understanding of God’s wrath, Harless shifted the focus of his discussion, much more than he had done earlier, from the law as a catalogue of ethical norms to the law in its properly theological sense, namely, to its accusing and convicting function. To be sure, Harless had always said, “The law is the Word of revelation: I am the Lord your God… In and through this Word God judges on earth.”83 But now he added a long series of quotations from Luther which speak of the law as a disciplinarian that leads to grace and which stress with the greatest imaginable clarity the usus elenchticus legis [the elenctical use of the law, i. e., the use of the law to manifest and refute sin. In Lutheran Orthodoxy this is often called the second use of the law, the law “as mirror.”].84 While it remains true that Harless held that “the supreme postulate (of the law) is that holy mindset whose content is the perfect love of God and the perfect love of neighbor,” he nevertheless rejected the idea that the law which demands this mindset also gives it.85 On the basis of the relevant passages from the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh chapters of Romans, he stated, “It is hereby (through the law) that I first really experience the nature and power of sin.”86 No longer is it merely the person’s awareness of sin that convicts the person, but it is first of all the law as disciplinarian which leads to grace that so convicts. “In and with the law … sin is reckoned formally and solemnly for what it is.”87 Given that this understanding proceeded from his assessment of the experience of rebirth, one may question if Harless bound the consciousness of sin, as well as the conscience and the law, too strongly to the wrath of the judging God and represented a much stronger version of the usis legis elenchticus. To be sure, he considered experience to be the only way to gain knowledge of the truth (over against the insights of systematic theology) and never retracted this as his starting point for the Encyclopedia—even though he can later also be critical of his first main work.88 And he continued to maintain that the experience of the restitution 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 163. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 165. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 50. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 157–161. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 149. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 140. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 139. Later Harless found fault with some of what had appeared in the Encyklopädie. Theodor

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

163

of the original fellowship with God brought with it not only the assurance of salvation but the “possession of salvation” [Heilsbesitz].89 But over against that [priority of experience] stands the deep knowledge of the righteous wrath of God and his juridical majesty which makes it much more difficult to base the assurance of salvation on pious subjectivity. To solve this problem Harless made no doubt the most important shift in emphasis in his later theology over against his earlier period. In that early period he had stated, All Christian knowledge… has its peculiar form—in which it differs from the form of secular knowledge—in this way, namely, that its ultimate reasons are not general axioms of logical necessity, but are a concrete personal experience which demonstrates itself as the correlate to a personal-historical witness of God to humankind.90

In the sixth edition of the Ethics this sentence is omitted. Instead, one reads in its place: The distinguishing feature of the general Christian consciousness must be two-fold: The determining objective power that moves the life of the Christian and the unique movement of that Christian’s life toward its highest goal … The Christian consciousness of life is the consciousness of the fellowship with God that is objectively mediated and enabled by Christ.91

These two quotations are not fundamentally at odds with each other. But Harless emphasized more strongly that the fellowship with God which is experienced in rebirth is “objectively” mediated by Christ. His emphasis on the “objective power of life” is now connected with the fact that Harless saw salvation and the assurance of salvation much more tightly bound to the Word than earlier: As the Word coming in the flesh is the salvation of the whole human race, so he (Christ) wants to be that (salvation) for individual people only in the Word he brings and offers for appropriation. Without his Word Christ is not our salvation. He is our salvation only in, with, and through his Word.”92

Given Harless’ strong emphasis on the wrath of God, everything is concentrated on the question of how God in Christ is for us. But this knowledge I have in the Word and on the basis of the Word. And the transcendent, ethical power of faith consists in that I go out of myself and go above myself

89 90 91 92

Heckel reports on a letter, dated January 25, 1865, in which Harless wrote, “During the time when people attempted to construct theology in a speculative way, theological encyclopedias had a certain albeit questionable significance. That time is over” (Harless, as quoted in Heckel, Adolf von Harleß, 154 [footnote 1]). Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 273ff. Harless, Ethik, 3rd ed., 2. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 3. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 172.

164

Lutz Mohaupt

and against all feeling, experiencing, and personal knowing I hold fast to that which is spoken and promised to me in the Word.93

Right at this point Harless relied on Luther and apparently recognized the dangers in his earlier comments: There is much useless talk about faith-feelings and faith-experiences. And whatever about it might be true, that faith is utterly unhealthy which would make human feelings and experiences, instead of the infallible Word, the guarantee of the certainty of one’s faith.94

Harless also put the emphasis differently regarding conversion. He emphasized now that an experience of suffering precedes all of our acts of the will and brings about an inclination of the heart that disposes the will in a godly manner.95

This goes along with the “experience of the power with which God smashes the heart and can discipline the conscience…”96 He thus expressly tied conversion to the pro-me structure of Christology and the significance of the Word. About the fellowship created through the experience of rebirth he wrote, “It is the relationship of God who turns to us, because in Christ he is for us and with us.”97 The place to seek “Christ for us,” however, is where he is also to be found. That is not in his hidden presence in our hearts, but in his revealed presence in his Word… All saving power for meaningful existence is enclosed in this Word and is to become ours through this Word … In order to make our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, the Word and nothing but the Word is given to us.98

That rebirth and conversion are connected to the death of the old Adam and that they occur solely through the Word, against all our feelings, Harless here supported with quotations from Luther. So it is not too difficult to see that Harless was here emphasizing the objective power of the Word over against mere subjective experience. However, it must be stated right away that Harless sought to maintain his basic position by combining his new insights with his earlier theology of restoration. “A fellowship of interdependence between God and man (in the sense of reintegration) takes place here 93 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 195. 94 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 195. Harless cites, for example, Luther’s writings, Walch edition, 11:857 (= WA 10, I, 2, 222, 26): “Therefore to feel is against faith; faith is against feeling.” Harless gave the additional quote from the Walch edition: “Feeling is against faith; faith against feeling” (“Fühlen ist wider den Glauben; Glaube wider das Fühlen”). 95 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 243. 96 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 252. 97 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 245. 98 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 282.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

165

(namely, in rebirth and conversion), which was structured from the beginning, for which the human being was created in respect to his spiritual side.”99 Harless emphasized the action of God and the objectivity and priority of the Word over against mere experience. He maintains, nonetheless, the “restoration” of a lost original relationship, which restoration, then though secondary, becomes no less accessible in the rebirth as the object of experience, the “possession of salvation” [Heilsbesitz] for the human being. In respect to the starting point of ethics, the fundamental problem that Harless got into through his response to Luther can be further pursued. It concerned the problem of the third use of the law [tertius usus legis]. In later editions of the Ethics one finds many occurrences of the expression, “the law of Christ” [Gesetz Christi].100 It may seem obvious that Harless had now put the lex Christi as a norm and demand, also for the Christian, alongside the law as constantly accusing [lex semper accusans].101 But this interpretation is too simplistic. To be sure, the explicit teaching of the tertius usus legis was absent from the original editions of the Ethics. It is, however, implicitly present, and can be found in the expression, “the law in Christ” [Gesetz in Christo].102 For the change in one’s mindset that comes from rebirth and conversion should lead to a fulfillment of the commands of the conscience and the positive law, which still continue to be in effect also after the conversion. In the sixth edition of the Ethics, however, Harless sharply denied the validity of the unchanged law also for Christians: … What is peculiar to the Christian moral consciousness is not given in the law, but in Christ, the goal and end of the law, … and therefore the Christian trembles before the temptation to find in Christ either a commandment or the law instead of ‘grace and truth.’103

It is an idea stemming from Luther with which Harless had trouble here. Starting with the fourth edition of the Ethics he included a statement from Luther as the epigram to the book: The one who believes is a new creature, a new tree; therefore this kind of expression, so common in the law, does not belong here, such as: A believer should do good works.

99 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 244. 100 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 125–127 (often). 101 Robert Schultz asserts and criticizes this (see Schultz, Gesetz und Evangelium, 104ff.), while F.W. Kantzenbach asserts and welcomes this (see Kantzenbach, Die Erlanger Theologie, 107ff., 127ff.). 102 In the third edition of the Ethics (p. 123), Harless distinguished between “the law as law” and “the law in Christ.” Only the latter is valid for the Christian. 103 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 124

166

Lutz Mohaupt

Likewise, people do not say: the sun should shine; a good tree should bear good fruit…104

It was only in the sixth edition of the Ethics that this had obvious consequences. Harless now came to the conclusion that the “law of Christ” does not consist in individual commandments but in the command of love. In it … we encounter ‘the new commandment,’ not a commandment of the law, but the required love which has its wellspring in the love of Christ, that is, that it springs forth from the love of Christ to us and springs forth in us.105

It has to do with a fundamental life-attitude in which a person, for his justification before God, places himself solely and entirely on the grace God vouchsafed him in Christ and directed to him in the word of promise.106

This life-attitude, Harless now said, is first and foremost nothing other than faith. He quoted Luther’s comment on John 6:28ff.: What God wants to have, that which is his work and faithful service, is for you to believe in Christ. That is [God] is speaking about the work that we are to do, namely, believe… Apart from faith God accepts no other worship [Gottesdienst].107

Therefore faith is the only possible human “work,” and yet it is entirely the work of God. From this grows the recognition that it is senseless to tell the believer that he should do good works, because just as good fruits come from a good tree, so good works grow from faith. Thus it would have been quite consistent, in view of these statements, if Harless would have placed the concept of “the law in Christ,” from the third edition of the Ethics, in the concrete issues [ad acta] of the sixth edition. But Harless strongly emphasized “the law of Christ” and the duty of the Christian to be obedient, and he pointed to many Bible passages for supporting evidence.108 Accordingly, “the conscience and the law are not stages of development which a person puts behind himself once he has come to faith in Christ.” For in Scripture the principle of the new life, Harless noted, is “also” called “a law.” This “law of Christ, command of Christ, the law of the Spirit or the law of faith” is not annulled for the Christian.109

104 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., preface, v. The word in parentheses is from Luther. See Walch, 22:717 (= WATR 6, 153, 4–15). 105 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 127. 106 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 182. 107 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 184. Harless cites Luther from the Walch edition, 7:1922ff. (=WA 33, 29, 9–11.14–27). 108 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 147 (for example, Rom. 12:2; Eph. 5:17; Rom. 10:16; 1 Peter 1:14; etc.). 109 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 124ff. (with reference to Gal. 6:2; Rom. 8:2; James; etc.)

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

167

There is no more strange misunderstanding than the opinion that one can strike the concept of divine justice and human duty, i. e., of objectively and subjectively conditioned obedience, from the consciousness of the Christian, when one says that on principle there is for the Christian no objective, legally fixed justice or legally written duty for the Christian and which conditions his obedience. On the contrary, it is hereby only stated that the Christian has a much stronger ability to know what justice, duty, and obedience mean.110

The same Harless who had elsewhere clearly rejected a Christian doctrine of duty is here concerned about the law as a norm for behavior and as a catalog of duties for the Christian.111 Above all, however, one must ask: How does this latter position fit with the knowledge that the only “work” of the Christian is faith, the faith that brings forth “good works” from itself, and that the Christian must guard against the “temptation” to re-establish a “law”? Harless found himself in a dilemma created by ideas from Luther. He emphatically adopted the notion of “simul justus et peccator” that underlies the problem of the law: Whoever does not understand the antinomy between a sinful saint and a hallowed sinner—whose resolution lies solely in the concept of imputed righteousness—does not at all have a basic understanding of the whole gospel.112

But he himself did not lay out the full import of this “resolution.” He overlooked the forensic structure of this expression and understood it in the sense of an educative process. For this he referred again to Luther. …The spiritually new person in us will not be completed in an hour, but is rather to become stronger day by day. Therefore, a Christian must not be lazy or imagine that he’s already perfect, but must grow and improve.113

But thereby Harless, “the theologian of the organizing principle,” is thinking about a process that is driven by the born-again person himself—albeit with God’s help [adiuvante Deo]—in which the old person is being mastered by the new. In the grace that is present and effective through the Holy Spirit, God wants to give me (!) the real possibility (!) of overcoming the death of the old Adam and of appropriating to myself, despite the sin that still clings to me, the grace of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the righteousness before God.114

Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 146ff. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., preface, vii. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 170. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 283. Harless cites Luther from the Walch edition, 7:1629ff. (= WA 51, 182, 9–12). 114 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 255.

110 111 112 113

168

Lutz Mohaupt

The struggle in which the converted person finds himself is meant to serve his “training for freedom, for the free, autonomous (!) subduing of evil.”115 The complexity in the concept of the law thus refers to the fact that the law is “not always a demand that comes to the human being from the outside. It can also be an “inner necessity,” “a law dwelling in the person’s faith,” an indwelling power that has an inner necessity.116

But must not this new “life principle” result in a God-pleasing responsibility of the person that then becomes the pledge of the certainty of salvation? 117 For Harless to be able to work into his own theology the statements he had taken up from Luther in a way that would be faithful to Luther’s thinking, Harless would have had to undermine the very foundations of his own system. The Lutheran Harless could not cope with Luther! Harless took hold of individual ideas of the Reformer but could only work them in if he put up with contradictions and thus rescued his own approach, rightly or wrongly, in the course of his encounter with Luther. The converted Christian has to guard his possession of salvation in a constant struggle by which he works on his own spiritual renewal. And whether in this struggle one’s salvation has still been maintained, according to Harless, the Christian can discern from certain markers, thus above all from the mark of the “existence of repentant faith… . It manifests itself simultaneously in both moods and impulses of the soul, namely, both in remorse for sins and in faith in the grace of God.”And the striving for self-renewal on the basis of penitent faith is “the factual proof of our rebirth and conversion.”118 Thereby Harless grounded the certainty of salvation in the condition of a human being. But that does not agree with Luther’s statement, which Harless himself quoted: “This is the great art and power of faith, namely, that faith sees what is not seen, and does not see what is still being felt, yes, that which oppresses and depresses a person… No such righteousness, holiness, life, and blessedness is visible or is felt, as the Word nonetheless says and faith must accept.” We must believe that God is gracious, even if he acts and speaks differently and all senses and feelings have been killed and the old Adam has gone under, so that nothing but faith in God’s goodness and no feeling remain in us.119

115 116 117 118 119

Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 295. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 125ff. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 226. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 252, 256, 269, 275. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 281. Harless cites Luther from the Walch edition, 11:684 (=WA 17, 2,

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

169

Harless faced the choice (very likely without realizing it himself): either to give up his fundamental starting point in part or to retain it, in tension with Luther. Harless did the latter.

Specific Issues In his Ethics and in many other writings Harless expressed his views on a number of complex ethical issues and individual questions, for example, on marriage, the family, culture, etc. A comprehensive report on these issues and questions is beyond the scope of this essay. The focus thus will be on one field of inquiry which had special significance for Harless in view of his Vita and also his basic theological orientation: the issue of political ethics and associated with it, the relationship between state and church. Harless worked influentially in this context for many decades, again and again becoming intensely involved, and he spoke up in a breadth of effectiveness as political preacher that can hardly be overestimated. Last but not least, he completed his literary work in 1870 by writing a small treatise on “church and state,” which summarized once again what he had to say on this topic. On the basis of the relevant New Testament texts Harless proceeded to show that Christ and the apostles considered the state as a given order established by God, but one concretely developed by human activity, an order to which all human beings owe obedience to God for their conscience’s sake.120 Accordingly, each order in the state is indeed a “product of that formative activity for which humans are designed as creative beings—by means of reason, understanding, and conscience.”121 But at the same time each order in the state has always two divine presuppositions: on the one hand, the “world-creating action of human social relationships established as an order of nature by God,” and on the other hand, the “world-governing action of the historical directing of the destinies of the nations.”122 By means of this two-fold God-given arrangement the “power of enforcement” is qualified as an order of the state, and by human formative activity that power of enforcement will be realized within a given nation. Under the category of nationality [Volkstum] we understand…the enduring character of a people or nation [Volk] as a spiritual individuality, in which we consider not only the 105, 15–17); Walch, 12:1005 (= WA 22,96, 12ff.); Walch, 11:646 [not the 10th volume, as Harless had written] (= WA 17, II, 66, 26–30). 120 Adolf von Harless, Staat und Kirche oder Irrthum und Wahrheit in den Vorstellungen von ‚christlichem‘ Staat und ‚freier‘ Kirche (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1870), 13ff. 121 Harless, Staat und Kirche, 22. 122 Harless, Staat und Kirche, 23.

170

Lutz Mohaupt

individual members of the nation living contemporaneously but also its successive generations as being bound together in a quasi-personal unity.123

Harless of course did not mean that the orders of this world would be immutable. For one thing, they change because of God’s rule of history, and precisely for this reason the Christian has to fit himself also into such changes. But there can be another reason; it can be “that under the name of an existing order there can be a great many things disturbing the order…”124 Therefore, there is no preservation of the existing order without the need for the constant renewal of the order and the elimination of those things that disturb it. On the other hand, no renewal of the order is legitimate without the preservation of the existing order. As an example of the overcoming of such a disturbance to the order Harless pointed to the struggle against the Revolution of 1848. But even here it was important to adhere strictly to the limits set by the existing order. So where the existence of the order is threatened by powers adverse to the order, there every Christian feels himself called to participate in the opposition to those powers that are destroying the order, but to do so in such a way that the form of this opposition and the individual participation in it keeps its protest carefully within the lawful and socioeconomic parameters of the existing order of the nation and everyone’s individual calling in the nation’s life.125

Also in relation to the church Harless distinguished between its divine basis and the human activities that develop it. The church is founded, however, not on the basis of a divine order of nature or God’s activity in the history of a nation, but it is in its very nature a divine order of salvation, which lives from Word and Sacrament. But at the same time it is an earthly community, concretely formed through human effort, and in that respect its “ecclesiality” or “ecclesial nature” [Kirchenthum] shows itself to be of human origin, for instance, in its confession and forms of worship” [Cultusformen].126 This differentiation between the divine basis of the church and the human effort that develops it has a parallel between state and church/ecclesiality, but in such a way that this latter differentiation should not obscure the total difference between the essence of each: the object and purpose of the civic order lie within the state and the nation itself, which are 123 Adolf von Harless, “Der christliche Staat,” Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche 35 (1858): 284–97 (here 297). Compare this statement with what Wolfgang Tilgner has said about Schleiermacher, “Like most of his contemporaries Schleiermacher represents a romantic understanding of Volk [a ‘people’ or ‘nation’] in which the nations are comprised of unified members and have their own unique individuality” (Wolfgang Tilgner, Volksnomostheologie und Schöpfungsglaube: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966], 37). 124 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 558. 125 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 556. 126 Harless, Staat und Kirche, 35.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

171

enclosed within this order. The ultimate, highest goal of the church’s ecclesial nature is the kingdom of God.127 In this way, the ecclesial nature of the church is by no means its own goal or fulfillment because …the kingdom of God on earth [is] completely present for the individual and in the community only in the heart of the hidden new man…128

But from this a “community of the kingdom” is already also growing on the earth, a community which here below as a kingdom of grace is to be the all-dominating and all-pervasive power of human community until in its consummation as the kingdom of glory in the hereafter… it reveals the perfected will of God…129

Therefore, because the godly individual is always at the same time a citizen in the state and in the kingdom of grace, his “Christian faith” has to be active in every secular relationship that he has, in the sense of renewing and transforming the secular order.130 For Christian belief affects the entire person in all of the relationships of his or her life. It was unthinkable for Harless that the church membership of the citizens would have no influence on their citizenship.131 This influence causes transformative and sanctifying impulses which come from the fully present kingdom of Christ in the heart of the individual Christian to extend upon the orders of the world. To that extent—but only to that extent—the Christian has a special place in politics, the state, and society. It is true: Christian faith offers insight also in political questions which eludes those who keep distant from it…But here one must also guard against simply allowing what is in itself correct knowledge to have an absolute and unqualified influence in the consideration of political questions.132

Not heeding this border limitation between church and state is extremely harmful: I do not know which of the two, Christian faith or the thorough consideration of political questions, is more harmed when a person pulls Christian belief into matters about which he or she, on the basis of the knowledge the person has or can have or should have simply as a Christian, in fact knows absolutely nothing.133 127 128 129 130 131 132

Harless, Staat und Kirche, 39. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 164. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 165. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 380. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 47. Adolf von Harless, Das Verhältniß des Christenthums zu Cultur- und Lebensfragen der Gegenwart, 2d. ed. (Erlangen: Bläsing [Deichert], 1866), 79. 133 Harless, Das Verhältniß des Christenthums, 74ff. Harless identifies several examples, such as “the administration of justice, household finances, trade agreements, business arrangements, the economy, taking up one’s residence in a locality,” etc.

172

Lutz Mohaupt

Inappropriate “border crossings” between church and state are also possible from the side of the state. Harless first experienced such an instance in the conflict over genuflecting, and as president of the upper consistory, he fought to find “the correct definition of the boundary” between church and state.134 In his view, the most likely possibility for “border conflicts” was in the area of the formation of civil law with respect to the formation of ecclesial law, for example, in the area of marriage law.135 The general rule is: If it should occur to the state to want to determine what God and God-pleasing divine service are to be, then the Christian church would have every right to refuse to obey and to declare the statute null and void. Similarly, if a church were to declare which ecclesial ordinance was to be lawfully binding on all citizens, then the state would be no less authorized to dismiss this as judicial overreach.136

The above position of Harless is distinct from the attitude toward the state held by Fr.J. Stahl. He viewed the state as a divine institution and the authorities as having been directly established by God’s grace.137 Harless could not have agreed with such a view, despite the fact that he otherwise often referred to Stahl and thought that he could not improve upon something that Stahl had stated.138 But Stahl’s idea of the Christian state he held to be wrong. Harless warned against a false theocracy, a “worldly Christianity,” in which the church misuses the power of the state for its own authority, and he warned against a “state Christianity,” in which the church loses its independence.139 The most biting satire about the idea of the Christian state would be the principle of territory: cuius regio, eius religio.140 Harless opposed the high episcopacy of the territorial prince or ruler and always fought against it in his church-political activity. The Church should not be so utterly absorbed in the state, nor the state in the church. But if one calls a state Christian because and insofar as its citizens are at the same time members of a Christian church, there is no reason to object.141

For Harless the godly individual thus is and remains the only connection between the orders of this world and the dawning kingdom of glory. The coming of this kingdom—whether in the manifest reality at the end of days, or in its hidden reality in the heart of the Christian—does not call into question the orders of this 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

Harless, Staat und Kirche, 73. Cf. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 562. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 82ff. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 77. Cf. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 563ff. Friedrich Julius Stahl, Die Philosophie des Rechts (1830–1837), ed. Henning von Arnim (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1926), 138. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., preface, iv; cf. Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 488; 552ff.; 560ff., and other places. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 56. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 60. Harless, Staat und Kirche, 47.

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

173

world but rather implies their sanctification and transformation. Harless thought about this under the guiding concept of re-integration and thus it remained tied to his theology of restoration. In Christ we have God for a Father; in Christ, God is not against us, but for us; in Christ, human nature is transformed and exalted to the glory of God, and once again heaven and earth are brought together under one head in Christ.142 The Christian does not exclude any earthly-human form of order from the relationship to the world plan of God in Christ, but he includes them all in their need for reintegration through Christ.143

If there is a special Christian contribution to politics, it is in the knowledge of God’s world plan: So every order that is established in creation and has been historically developed within creation is grounded in an original creation and world plan that is rooted in Christ. Its actual and ongoing creative power is apparent and reflected in every form of human community, but it is rightly recognized and observed only by those who are in Christ.144

Thereby Harless showed that in the realm of politics and society he acted in accord with his ethics of fulfillment [seiner Ethik des πληρῶσαι]. The concrete activity of the born-again Christian must be sustained by the desire to transfigure and sanctify the orders in the kingdom of the world, to bring to bear upon them, by means of the “Spirit of renewal,” a “renewing principle of the Spirit” and thereby to eliminate every negative disturbance of the orders. Apart from that, the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of grace exist relatively disconnected next to one another: the one stands in need of transformation, and the other, as down payment for that future kingdom of glory, in which that process of realizing the divine idea of world redemption will come to fulfillment and every disturbance of order and all sins will have been overcome. The Christian knows this world plan of God. He sees deeper than the natural human being because he has experienced the fellowship with God in his heart and participates in God’s being and knowledge. This leads to faithfulness and gratitude, which are by no means actualized only as the final appendix in national civic life and the political order of the state.

142 Adolf von Harless, Die Sonntagsweihe. Predigten, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1849), 3:108. Similarly: Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 427. 143 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 506. 144 Harless, Ethik, 6th. ed., 506; cf. Harless, Das Verhältniß des Christenthums, 79.

174

Lutz Mohaupt

Criticism To provide a comprehensive criticism of the life and thought of Harless is not possible here. But we can offer a few assessments, which nevertheless make clear both the impressive originality of his overall theological thought as well as its limited use; the immense force his thought and activity as well as the limits that he thereby met. His project of assuring the truth vis-à-vis the organic structure of theological knowledge, through participation in the primordial knowledge of God about the supra-creaturely order of things, newly available in the experience of rebirth; his conception of the universal-historical kingdom of God that was developed on this basis and that implies the eschatological reintegration of the world and history under Christ as its head; the consistency with which everything was focused on the recovery of the identity of a confessional Lutheran church, on the formation of its life-style, and on the promotion of its capacity for action— this whole project cannot but exercise a certain fascination today. It was thereby Harless after all who set in motion a new and immensely influential way of thinking and church formation in the nineteenth century, at which he continued to work effectively until the very end. And the effects of his work are still to be felt today by anyone examining Protestant theology in Bavaria and the ecclesial terrain there, as an outsider. In this way Harless set forth a clear alternative to the irresistible appeal of Schleiermacher. Despite all of the similarity in their focus on pious individuality, there are two decisive differences that divided them: Schleiermacher wanted to demonstrate for the educated among the despisers of religion that they too have always participated in religion through their “sense and taste for the infinite,” and with the notion of the feeling of absolute dependence he made a demonstrable structural phenomenon in human existence, which exists apart from any dogmatic reflection, into the fulcrum and hub of his theological system.145 For Harless this same function was assumed by the individual, unique experience of rebirth, which simply presupposed as the general starting point the fundamental conflict between good and evil, which everyone experiences in the conscience. Thereby he too tried to address the “basic challenge” of his century, namely, the “question of the relationship between revelation and the natural knowledge of truth gained by reason,” but broke off his engagement with it by retreating to the Archimedean point of a personal experience which is irrefutable.146

145 F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Reden über die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (Berlin: Unger, 1799), ed. H.-J. Rothert (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1958), 30. 146 Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis, 13 (citing Reinhold Seeberg, Die Kirche Deutschlands im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 2d ed., [Leipzig: Deichert, 1904], 127).

Adolf von Harless (1806–1879)

175

There is a certain tragedy in that he sought to lay claim to Luther’s help without realizing that he would have had to change fundamental positions in his own system in order truly to follow him. And he wanted to do just that: to bring Luther himself more directly into play, not merely to quote him, but to engage him and to learn from him. To do that, Harless returned to the sources themselves and allowed them to speak, and for this reason he rightly has been given a place in nineteenth-century Luther research.147 But Luther’s insistence on the external word [verbum externum] and his correlation between Word and faith are something other than the personally experienced unique “fact” of rebirth. And the certainty of faith in the sense of “assertions” or “declarations” [assertiones], which Luther held as indispensable in De servo arbitrio, is something other than the “possession of salvation” [Heilsbesitz], and then just striving in ethical action in order to preserve it.148 These fundamental insights of Luther’s thought Harless was not really able to incorporate into his system. In respect to ethics, particularly the ethics of politics and the definition of the relationship between church and state, from the distance of 150 years we can simply grant Harless’ approach the role of identifying a problem. The fact that he viewed the civic order to be the result of divine action in the order of creation and the destinies of nations and on this basis called for obedient falling in line in national life [Volkstum] and the nation’s order [Volksordnung]—that led him to the most fatal of consequences. In the historic events that took place in the middle of the century [the Revolution of 1848] he saw nothing but God’s judgment descending upon the world.149 And yet in 1870 he wrote, Through two powers God is letting a judgment be prepared. Small is the number of those guided by God’s Spirit who are carrying out God’s judgment; the number of those wretched who are driven by ‘God’s house-slave’—as Luther called Satan—is legion.150

The background of these “Cassandra-cries,” delivered in large number especially in his sermons, becomes clear when one asks, wherein did the misery of the German people lie for Harless: The most important, simple basic ideals under which the men in loyalty and honor once rallied around Throne and Fatherland, around Altar and Church—they are all shattered into a thousand fragments. Because now everyone has concocted his own eccentric notion about Fatherland and altar, each one for himself, not a one like the other.151

147 Winter, Die Erlanger Theologie, 57. 148 WA 18, 603,28ff.: “Take away assertions and you take away Christianity” (“Tolle assertiones, et Christianismum tulisti”). 149 Harless, Die Sonntagsweihe, 1:144; 2:210 and other places. 150 In a letter dated March 10, 1870 (published by Heckel, Adolf von Harleß, 138). 151 Harless, Die Sonntagsweihe, 3:89.

176

Lutz Mohaupt

That describes the divinely willed order, as Harless conceived it, which was under threat of being destroyed, and so at the end of one of his sermons he prayed to God, If it is about the struggle for the Fatherland, so make heroes loyal to God of those who are to shed their blood! 152

In this way Harless drew his ethics of the fulfillment [Ethik des πληρῶσαι] about the norms of creation and the obedience to God’s reign in the destinies of the nations into political life, and that raises the question of what thus still remained of his otherwise so carefully grasped and articulated separation between church and state. It is at this point that Harless must be made to face off against Harless, for with his rejection of both a Christian state and the political instrumentalization of the church he himself participated in the epochal but still incomplete breakthrough of an insight into the living conditions of a global political order: that it is the plurality of the religions that forbids that these be instrumentalized politically; and that politics can only then remain committed to peace and freedom, to basic security for life’s essentials and social equality, when it remains aware that [the political life] depends on preconditions which it did not create itself. To all of that, Harless would today certainly have a thing or two to say; for a productive, imaginative theologian, a penetrating thinker and insightful scholar, a skillful diplomat and far-sighted church-political strategist, and last but not least a brilliant preacher—that he was. Thus he was, Adolph von Harless, the “Prince of the Church.”

152 Harless, Die Sonntagsweihe, 1:174.

David Ratke

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe was born in 1808 in the Franconian city of Fürth. He died less than two months short of his sixty-fourth birthday in 1872. Except for a few years, he lived his entire life in two locales: Fürth and Neuendettelsau. Neuendettelsau, where Löhe spent the better part of his adult life and nearly all of his ministry, was a small village of fewer than a thousand inhabitants. He never saw the ocean and barely left German-speaking territory. Nonetheless from his parsonage and pulpit in this small village, far removed from the corridors of political power and the sanctuaries of ecclesial power, Löhe had an impact on liturgy, mission, and church-state relations throughout Germany. Löhe grew up in the city of his birth. Fürth was an industrial and manufacturing center near Nuremburg and Löhe’s childhood home was a typical middle-class home of the era. Both of Löhe’s parents came from middle-class families. His father, Johann, came from a family which owned and operated an inn, although Johann himself took over his father-in–law’s spice business.1 If the Löhe family was unusual, it was unusual for its piety. The prevailing piety in that region was influenced by the practical, rationalistic, and deistic currents of the eighteenth century. Löhe’s family however inclined toward the pietism of the type espoused by the Moravians. Even though this kind of faith was viewed with deep suspicion by church (and state) authorities, the Löhe family did not deny or hide it. In fact, they participated in the established Lutheran Church and the group of Moravians that met regularly. Löhe’s life was never easy. From the beginning it was marked by grief and sorrow. Before he was born, his parents had experienced the deaths of four children. An older sister had epilepsy. When Löhe was seven years old, a younger 1 Much of the material on Löhe’s biography and historical setting here is adapted from the first chapter of my book on him: Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Löhe (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2001). Also very helpful is Erika Geiger, The Life, Work, and Influence of Wilhelm Löhe 1808–1872, trans. Wolfgang Knappe (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2010). I’ll only cite from these two sources where I’ve directly quoted from them.

178

David Ratke

sister died at the age of fourteen months. A year later, his father died when he was only fifty-two years old. His mother became a widow responsible for the upbringing of six children as well as operating the family spice business. From a young age, Löhe had been attracted to the Christian faith. As a young boy he delighted in “playing pastor” and would climb up on a box and preach to other children. Once when the pastors of the area were gathered for a meeting in his church he stood in the balcony and looked down on the pastors there. The view made a deep impression on him. His mother, recognizing his interests, his faith, and his intellect, wanted to encourage Löhe as she thought he would be a good and faithful pastor. Thus she enrolled him in the best schools that she could afford so that he would be well prepared for theological studies. Among those was the famous Melanchthon Gymnasium in Nuremberg which had been established by Luther’s colleague in the sixteenth century as part of the Reformation that swept over Germany. Following his graduation from Melanchthon Gymnasium in 1826, Löhe enrolled at the university in Erlangen, where he studied theology with the intention of becoming a pastor. This, of course, came as no surprise to anybody who had known the young Löhe. He was always something of a loner. Throughout school he had been a serious student who was very hesitant to join in with other students. University was no different. He planned nearly every minute of every day. He was either attending lectures, studying, or attending meetings of some mission circle or another. The most important influences on Löhe in this period were two Reformed professors: Karl von Raumer, a geology professor who often hosted students at his home for Bible studies, and Christian Krafft, a theology professor who introduced Löhe to the writings of David Hollaz. Both of these men were associated with the Erweckungstheologie (revival theology) movement. They were no more enamored of the prevailing rationalism than Löhe was. It was little surprise that Löhe fell in with them, given his distrust and skepticism of rationalism and his passion for the Christian faith. Löhe completed his studies and successfully wrote his theological examinations in 1830. On July 25, 1831, he was ordained in Ansbach. In keeping with his serious, thoughtful nature, he read the Augsburg Confession several times in preparation for his ordination. He wanted to be sure that he knew and understood what he was agreeing to in becoming a pastor of the Bavarian Lutheran Church. Despite becoming ordained and being a good student, he did not immediately find a position as pastor. At that time, there were more candidates than positions. Furthermore Löhe had already established a reputation as being a little unconventional, to say the least. He was considered to be a pietist and a mystic. Neither of those were desirable qualities in the opinion of the leaders of the Bavarian Lutheran Church. Three months following his ordination he began as vicar in Kirchenlamnitz. Löhe was a fiery preacher who was not hesitant to

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

179

condemn vice. Moreover his pietism did little to calm those in authority and influence there. He angered some important people in the parish and was recalled and asked to appear before the Upper Consistory in 1834. The president of the Upper Consistory was a lawyer, Frederick Roth, who was the brother of the rector of Melanchthon Gymnasium, where Löhe had been a student some years earlier. Roth (the lawyer) was favorably impressed by Löhe and recommended him to a temporary position at St. Egidien in Nuremberg. Löhe made the most of the opportunity. His skill as a preacher was undeniable. People flocked to the church to hear him preach. Many of the most significant citizens of Nuremberg participated in the Bible study classes he held. Even so, as in Kirchenlamnitz, Löhe alienated others. When his contract at St. Egidien’s expired, it wasn’t renewed. He wrote (and easily passed) his second set of theological examinations in 1835. Even if positions were scarce, a person with his intellectual gifts and undisputable gift for preaching, worship leadership, and pastoral ministry should have had little difficulty obtaining a position. But Löhe had made too many enemies. He applied for a number of positions. Friends and supporters presented his name for other positions, but nothing came of these efforts. Finally he received and took a call to Neuendettelsau, which began on August 1, 1837, a year that turned out to be quite eventful for him. He married Helene Andreae just before moving into the parsonage at Neuendettelsau. He had met her three years earlier while serving at St. Egidien’s in Nuremberg. They had four children together, but the marriage was sadly cut short by Helene’s sudden death in 1843. Löhe’s best known book, Three Books about the Church (1845), was inspired by his conversations with his beloved Helene. Many of Löhe’s most important ideas or emphases can be found in this book which he wrote near the beginning of his ministry: mission, worship, the sacraments, ministry, the pastoral office, and confessional identity. Three Books about the Church can be seen, in some respects, as a kind of mission statement for Löhe’s ministry. His other writings tend to expound and expand on the themes and ideas first presented in this work. Outside of Germany, Löhe is best known for his support for foreign mission. This was a passion since his student days in Erlangen, where he had established a mission society. In 1840, Friedrich Wyneken published an appeal for help in North America. The Lutheran church there was in desperate need of Lutheran pastors to minister to German emigrants who had nobody to preach to them in their own language and nobody to preside at the Lord’s Supper. Löhe was deeply moved by Wyneken’s appeal and wrote an article for the Sonntagsblatt. The response was quick and, in one respect, unexpected. Löhe received financial donations; that wasn’t entirely unexpected although he wasn’t sure how to distribute these donations. That problem resolved itself soon in an unexpected response to his article.

180

David Ratke

Adam Ernst and Georg Burger appeared on his doorstep and volunteered to become missionaries in the New World. Neither of them had the necessary education that would even qualify them to attend university and study theology. Löhe told them to go home and earn money which they could donate to “real” missionaries. The two men, a shoemaker and a weaver, were not so easily dissuaded. Finally, Löhe decided to educate them himself in Neuendettelsau with a kind of basic education that would qualify them to work as schoolteachers in the United States. The two men stayed with him until 1842, when they went to the United States. There they eventually found their way to the seminary in Columbus, Ohio, where they enrolled. As it happened, the need for pastors was greater than the need for teachers so the two men made plans to become pastors. This became the model for much of Löhe’s mission activity. He provided a basic education for laborers and artisans who then went to the United States where they would be educated at a seminary before being ordained. The relationship between Löhe and the Columbus seminary soured over the question of the use of German in the church there. Löhe saw the relationship between Lutheranism and German language and culture as being so close that it wasn’t really possible to be Lutheran without knowing German. Any move away from German was a move away from a Lutheran confessional identity. Löhe had foreseen this disruption and had instructed his men to approach the Missouri Lutherans to see if a relationship might be possible. It was and thus Löhe provided the resources to make the establishment of the seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a reality. However this relationship also soured and Löhe tried again with a seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, which moved to Iowa only three years later.2 Within Germany, Löhe might be best known for his confessionalism. Although he was deeply influenced by the pietism of the eighteenth century, he was also not one to conceal his Lutheran identity. In the very first years of his ministry in Neuendettelsau, Löhe got caught up in the Kniebeugungsstreit (kneeling controversy). King Ludwig I had been impressed by the French practice of having soldiers kneel at Mass and Corpus Christi processions when the host passed. He ordered his soldiers—Roman Catholic and Protestant alike—to do the same. Lutherans in Bavaria were enraged. Protestant soldiers were punished for their refusal to kneel. One Lutheran pastor was removed from his congregation and sentenced to prison for advocating open defiance of the order. Finally in 1845, the king heeded the advice of his advisors and rescinded the order. Throughout his ministry, Löhe advocated resistance to a union between Lutheran and Reformed churches.3 Moreover he was uneasy about the close rela2 This seminary is the forerunner of Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. 3 In Bavaria this was possible because the kingdom included the Palatinate, which was predominantly Reformed.

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

181

tionship between church and state. In Bavaria this meant that the Roman Catholic king was the head of the Lutheran Church there. Also it meant that the ruler could enforce a union between churches that didn’t want to be united. The 1840s and early 1850s were years of conflict with authorities in Germany, yet they were also a time of fruitful mission activity in North America. Following those years, Löhe turned his attention and his energy to inner mission. Löhe established homes for the mentally and physically handicapped, for orphans, as well as deaconess houses. The thrust of all this activity was the same: to care for and minister to those who were at the edge of society. His mission interests—whether overseas or at home—were driven by his conviction that the gospel extended to the underprivileged and that the gospel was not merely a spiritual matter. The last decade of Löhe’s life should have been satisfying to a man so driven by passion for the gospel. He had sent numerous missionaries to North America and he had established a number of institutions and organizations that were dedicated to the care and ministry of the underprivileged. Neuendettelsau itself had been transformed from a sleepy, backward village to a bustling town. However Löhe was beset by a number of physical ailments. A bout with typhus, kidney problems, laryngitis, and a stroke severely weakened him. When he died in 1872, he had been largely incapacitated for the previous decade. His gravestone is engraved with the confession “I believe in the communion of saints.”

Mission Löhe was interested in mission from an early age. A hallmark of Pietists such as August Hermann Francke and Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was a commitment to mission and evangelism. It would be hard to imagine that Löhe wasn’t influenced by the Pietists in his family. As a student in Erlangen, he was involved in mission societies and distributed religious tracts. He was earnest about his faith and shared it freely with others. As he developed as a pastor and theologian, he began to incorporate the theme of mission into his theology. That focus would remain important for his subsequent thinking.4 Within fifteen years of establishing that first mission society in Erlangen, Löhe had started training Adam Ernst and Georg Burger and had sent them to North America. He had also established a periodical dedicated to mission activity in North America.5 The idea behind this periodical was to inform his readers about 4 Christian Weber, Missionstheologie bei Wilhelm Löhe: Aufbruch zur Kirche der Zukunft (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996), 193. 5 It was called Kirchliche Mittheilungen aus und über Nordamerika.

182

David Ratke

how God was blessing the church. In hearing about how lives were being changed and blessed, readers would be inspired to support mission. How did Löhe understand mission? Simply put, mission was “sending out.” He wrote that mission means “sending Christian preachers out among nonChristian peoples, namely among heathen.”6 However Löhe didn’t actually think about mission as activity in foreign lands among those who aren’t Christian. Certainly some missionaries carry out the work of the church in such settings. But Löhe speaks of all Christians, or rather the church, as participating in mission. A farmer in Neuendettelsau who participates in the church participates in mission too. Mission is closely connected, for Löhe, to the church. Many Christians might point to the Great Commission (“Go make disciples of all nations …”; Matt 28:19) as providing the mandate to evangelize. However Löhe didn’t connect mission to Matthew 28. He connected mission to the account of life in the early church: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved (Acts 2:42–7).

There are two things that Löhe took from this passage. First, as already mentioned, he links mission to the church, not to individuals. Obviously individuals carry out mission, but they do so on behalf of the church. Second, Löhe links mission to the fellowship or community that characterizes the church. In the passage cited above from Acts 2, Luke describes the early church and then notes that “the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” In this sense, mission means to love others, to reach out to them in love.7 Mission and fellowship are tied together. Why does the church do mission? There are multiple answers. The obvious answer is that the gospel should be shared with those who might otherwise be damned. Misery is the lot of those who have not heard and received the gospel. They experience misery both in the here and now and in the hereafter. That being the case, how could Christians not be moved? Löhe wrote: 6 Wilhelm Löhe, Die Mission unter den Heiden: Zwei Gespräche zur des Volks geschrieben [hereafter Die Mission unter den Heiden], in Gesammelte Werke [hereafter GW], ed. by Klaus Ganzert (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1951–86), IV: 20. 7 Löhe, “Kirche und Mission,” GW IV: 627.

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

183

Indeed who can read or hear, what you, my dear ones, have often read and heard—the innumerable and dreadful violations of the innate human laws by the heathen, the disorder, the destruction of all happiness and peace, the dissolution and destruction of every natural bond as they result from these violations and indeed must result? 8

The gospel of Jesus Christ brings order to societies (one can hardly even think of these as “communities”) governed by disorder, lawlessness, and chaos.9 Salvation is not just about the hereafter; it makes a difference in the present. This suggests another reason for mission and an important theme in Löhe’s theology. At the beginning of Three Books about the Church, Löhe asserted, “a human who is alone cannot be blessed at all.”10 Participation in a community is necessary if you want to be blessed and experience joy. People who isolate themselves and do not participate in a community will not experience genuine joy and blessing. The goal of mission is to bring people into fellowship. Fellowship is a key theme in Löhe’s theology. Löhe was motivated not so much by the need to save people from damnation; he was motivated more by the desire to welcome people into fellowship. Adherents of other religions should have the opportunity to join in the fellowship and community that Christians enjoy. An accident of birth should not exclude them. And since there is no salvation (that is, joy, healing, and community) outside the church, Christians should go “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).11 Mission is about inviting people into a divine fellowship. The church is where that divine fellowship is experienced most deeply and fully. In fact, this fellowship is experienced—and expressed—most fully in the Lord’s Supper. The most important reason for mission is not to save people from hell or to invite them into the fellowship and the community of the church. The most important reason is because God commanded the church “to preach to the

8 Wilhelm Löhe, “Predigt am 2. Pfingstfeiertag 1843 über Apg. 10,42,” GW IV: 60; hereafter “Predigt am 2. Pfingstfeiertag.” 9 Löhe wrote, “Every day hundreds of thousands of unfortunate souls with conscious grief go out the gates of time and enter into the gates of eternity” (“Predigt am 2. Pfingstfeiertag,” GW IV: 61). 10 Wilhelm Löhe, Drei Bücher von der Kirche, ed. by Dietrich Blaufuss (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 2006), 16. He repeated this point in Prediget das Evangelium: Predigt, am Missionsfest 1847 gehalten über Mark. 16, 15: “Denn ein Christ kann nicht allein sein, nicht an sich und seiner Seligkeit genug haben, weil er zur Gemeinschaft der Heiligen geboren ist” (GW IV: 123). 11 Löhe wrote, “The Hindu, just because he was born humble and poor, should not be excluded from the blessings of religion, he should not be accursed, an outcast, and lead a wretched existence! The peace of God, which the gospel brings, should seize every heart and bring bliss. Love should be passed from person to person and the thought … of humanity as one family of God should be captured in the desolate hearts of heathens” (Löhe, Die Mission unter den Heiden, GW IV: 41).

184

David Ratke

people” (Acts 10:42).12 Preaching the gospel to all people is the nature of the church. Preaching the gospel is what the church does that makes it the church. Preaching reminds us of another theme important to Löhe: right doctrine. He was concerned that the gospel would be “taught purely,” as AC IV puts it. The gospel should be taught purely so that people would believe correctly. If people believed the wrong thing, there was no possibility of true community. Genuine community is characterized by unity of belief. The truth of the gospel is apparent in right doctrine. All are welcome into the community created and nourished by the gospel, but false doctrine leads to a false sense of community.

Confession Confessionalism—right doctrine—was closely connected to mission. Confessional integrity and right doctrine were important, not just in Germany in the disputes with the Bavarian government and the attempts to create a united Protestant church, but also in mission. Confessional integrity was as important as mission. Löhe withdrew support from the Basel Mission because of concerns about doctrine. In North America, he broke with the seminary in Columbus and then later with the seminary in Fort Wayne because of concerns about doctrine. Löhe did not grow up in a home or in a church where confessional identity would have been particularly important. The preaching he heard at church was characterized by devotion to rationalism and practical matters.13 Important influences in his schooling and even university were Reformed in nature, such as the consequential words and actions of Karl von Raumer and Christian Krafft. These men were influential because of the sincerity of their faith, not because of the doctrine they adhered to. It must have been during his theological studies at Erlangen that confessional integrity began to matter to him. 1817 marked the 300th anniversary of Luther’s posting of the Ninety-five Theses in Wittenberg. 1821 was the occasion for celebrating the same anniversary of the Diet of Worms. And finally 1830 was a significant jubilee year for the Augsburg Confession. These important anniversaries led to a resurgence of interest among Lutherans in those events and thereby their history and theology. Alongside these celebrations was the forced union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia. Finally, during Löhe’s youth, Napoleon gave Franconia to

12 Löhe, “Predigt am 2. Pfingstfeiertag,” GW IV: 64. See also Löhe, Prediget das Evangelium, GW IV: 114. 13 For example, a sermon on the parable of the sower might well be a lesson about the latest agricultural techniques.

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

185

King Maximilian I of Bavaria. Franconia was largely Lutheran and Bavaria was Roman Catholic. An important intellectual and cultural current in this period was Romanticism which celebrated nature, nation, and community. This is to say that Löhe was a child of his times. He was shaped by historical forces. He got caught up in Lutheranism’s fascination with its own history and theology. He, too, became interested in forging a common national identity (which, for him, meant Franconia in the context of Bavaria, and Germany in the context of the world). And finally, he was interested in community. Three Books about the Church is, in many ways, a meditation on community. A community, as already discussed above, is held together by a common set of beliefs. Löhe felt that a common canon or adherence to the Bible was insufficient. After all, Roman Catholics believed in the same Bible as he did, and yet he had little in common with them. A common creed, such as the Apostles’ Creed or even the Nicene Creed, was also insufficient for true unity. Again, the differences between Roman Catholics and Lutherans served to demonstrate that common creeds were insufficient to achieve true unity. Löhe settled on the Lutheran Confessions as being sufficient for true unity. They were sufficient because they were a true and complete presentation of the Christian faith. Even so, even the Book of Concord could not guarantee confessional unity. You needed only look around at the other Lutheran congregations and Lutheran pastors in Bavaria to see that. Nonetheless, the Lutheran Confessions became the test and the basis for what it meant to be Lutheran. Central to Löhe’s understanding of what it means to be Lutheran and why the Confessions mattered was the teaching on Word and sacrament. He said that a church is defined by its practice and theology of Word and sacrament.14 This is why the Lutheran Confessions are so important. They define the Lutheran understanding of the gospel, of justification, of church and ministry, of the sacraments, of God, and many other doctrinal matters. The Confessions differentiate between the Lutheran teaching and understanding of, for example, the Lord’s Supper with that of the Roman Catholic Church. It was Löhe’s view that the Lutheran Church has the pure Word and sacrament in a pure confession, it obviously has the highest treasures of the church unperverted. It … has God’s fullness and the living source from which all deficiencies may be supplied.15

14 Drei Bücher von der Kirche, 99; see also Wilhelm Löhe, Three Books about the Church, trans., ed., and with an intro. by James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 107. 15 Three Books about the Church, 113 [Drei Bücher von der Kirche, 107].

186

David Ratke

Other denominations’ teaching on Word and sacrament is deficient. This meant that community in these denominations was deficient. The fullness of community, that Löhe believed every human yearned for, was only available in the Lutheran Church.

Catholicity It might seem odd to think about Löhe as someone rather interested in catholicity, given his insistence on confessional fidelity. Nonetheless, catholicity was an important theme to Löhe. Apostolicity and catholicity were closely connected to each other and express the same reality: the integrity of doctrine. Apostolicity is associated with the temporal integrity of the gospel; catholicity is associated with the geographical. The church, especially the Lutheran Church, was one with the apostolic church described in the Acts of the Apostles. The doctrine which allowed for unity in community was the same. This made community possible across the centuries.16 Those people who worshipped and knelt at the communion rail in Neuendettelsau could be assured that they were in community with the first Christians. This same unity was possible across space too. People in Neuendettelsau worshiped the same God and adhered to the same gospel as Lutherans in North America who adhered to the Confessions. This emphasis on right doctrine makes Löhe into a kind of nineteenth-century version of the orthodox Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century. However it is his focus on the sacraments which differentiates him from earlier Lutheran theologians. The bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Christ, bind Christians together. He focused on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, but the focus on the Lord’s Supper rather than on justification, for example, suggested a kind of catholicity that wasn’t possible in earlier Lutheran theologians who were also committed to confessional loyalty. Löhe’s interest in the Lord’s Supper and a way of worshipping that would properly highlight the gifts of the Lord’s Supper led him into conversation with Christians who were not Lutheran. He visited Roman Catholic parishes and was acquainted with Roman Catholic priests.17 These relationships were not for the purpose of ecumenical relationships and shared ministries in the same way we might think of ecumenism today. Nonetheless Löhe was interested in their tra16 Drei Bücher von der Kirche, 32 [= Three Books about the Church, 59]. 17 In 1838, at the very beginning of his ministry in Neuendettelsau, Löhe could claim a “friendly relationship” with the neighboring Roman Catholic priest and indicated that he had been present at some services of that priest. See Wilhelm Löhe, “Brief an das Königliche Dekanat” (16 May 1838), GW V/1: 63; as well as Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Zwischen Erweckung und Restauration (Gladbeck: Schriftenmissions-Verlag, 1967), 44.

Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872)

187

ditions and practices for how they might shape and inform Lutheran worship and piety. His prayer books, of which there are many, include prayers for saints and festival days that we might take for granted (but also some that we might not take for granted). In a world where Lutherans might only celebrate the Lord’s Supper two or three times each year and in a world where really only the liturgical seasons were acknowledged, Löhe’s liturgical and historical sensibilities were rather innovative and unconventional. For example, Löhe suggested that the Marian festivals might be included in the Lutheran liturgical calendar. These feast days (i. e., the Annunciation of Our Lord, the Visitation of Mary, and the Candlemas of Mary) should be celebrated so that Christians can experience the entire splendor of the history of Jesus.18 Even now, this suggestion would raise eyebrows in many Lutheran congregations. Catholicity meant universal in time and space, but didn’t necessarily mean big or large. Catholicity had more to do with adherence and fidelity to the gospel. It meant fidelity to the gospel as proclaimed by the early church and articulated in the Lutheran Confessions. It could be found among those who were not Lutheran. After all, there weren’t Lutherans before Luther! Catholicity and fidelity to the gospel had to do with adherence to the one, true faith. This faith might be the faith of many people in a given place or perhaps just a few. Nonetheless, God promised that it would go to the ends of the earth and there was no reason not to trust God!

Conclusion Löhe was shaped by the forces and currents of his time: industrialization, Romanticism, the rise of nationalism, and a renaissance of interest in Luther and the Confessions. At the same time he contributed to some of these forces and currents. He was a significant figure in the confessional struggles within Bavarian Lutheranism throughout the 1830s and into the 1850s. His interest in mission led him to develop a deaconess association, which ministered to the underprivileged, and to send missionaries to North America to minister to the German immigrants there. Löhe’s interest in mission and the Confessions lent themselves in a creative way to a commitment to catholicity. Mission itself was a commitment to the catholicity of the church. Confessional fidelity gave a sense of identity to Christians in far-flung places. His interest in worship, which motivated him to 18 Wilhelm Löhe, Agende für christliche Gemeinden des lutherischen Bekenntnisses, GW VII/1: 27. See also Wilhelm Löhe, “Von Benutzung des Heiligenkalenders für das eigene Leben,” GW IV: 425–8, esp. 427.

188

David Ratke

write prayer books and develop worship books, is rooted in mission and confession. Christians in North America (and Germany for that matter!) needed worship resources that reflected the fullness and truth of the Lutheran Confessions. All of this is to say that Löhe in his ministry and his theology endeavored to hold seemingly opposite ideas in creative tension.

Matthew L. Becker

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

Biography1 Johannes Christian Konrad Hofmann was born in Nuremberg on December 21, 1810, and raised by his mother and step-father in an atmosphere of Pietism, the German Religious Awakening, and the cultural Romanticism and political “restoration” that followed the Napoleonic era.2 At the Gymnasium he was drawn to the study of history, especially of ancient Greece and Rome, although in his spare time he also enjoyed reading the poems of Novalis and Schiller and the plays of Shakespeare. As a student at the University of Erlangen (1827–29), he continued his study of history in preparation for a career in public service, but he also took a few theology courses, to please his mother. At that time the seventeen-year-old came under the influence of Christian Krafft (1784–1845), a Reformed pastor and associate professor of theology, and Karl von Raumer (1783–1865), professor of natural history and pedagogics, both of whom were advocates of the piety that had been emerging from the Religious Awakening. They ensured that Hofmann’s future academic work would have a theological component. Between 1829 and 1832 Hofmann lived in Berlin and worked as a private tutor in the home of a countess. During these years he attended the University of Berlin, where he was evidently unimpressed with both Hegel and Schleiermacher. He faulted them for what he thought was their inattention to basic historical facts and biblical details. In a letter to a friend and one-time colleague, he remarked that Hegel’s philosophy of history had “ruined” in him “all taste for his

1 The only book-length treatment of Hofmann’s life is by Paul Wapler, Johannes v. Hofmann: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der theologischen Grundprobleme, der kirchlichen und der politischen Bewegungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1914). 2 His father, Lorenz, died when Johannes was quite young. In 1855 Hofmann was decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Civil Service of the Bavarian Crown, for his university and political service, and from that time onward he was Johannes von Hofmann.

190

Matthew L. Becker

philosophy.”3 Hofmann also criticized the conservative Berlin theologian, Ernst Hengstenberg, whose “biblicistic” understanding of the Old Testament Hofmann rejected as “unhistorical.” Only later, when he returned to Erlangen, would the writings of Kant, Schleiermacher, and Schelling become important for his thinking.4 Hofmann’s attitude toward Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Hengstenberg was most likely determined by his favorite professor, Leopold von Ranke, whose lectures he called “his daily pleasure.” The influence of Ranke’s seminars made certain that Hofmann’s theological concerns would have a largely historical focus. Indeed, for a time, due to the impact of the Berlin historian, Hofmann thought seriously of giving up theology altogether in order to pursue only historical studies and politics as his life’s vocation. Raumer, however, was able to dissuade him from this option. After resuming his studies at Erlangen, Hofmann completed both an historical and a theological dissertation.5 During these years he taught history in the local Gymnasium, while also occasionally giving university lectures in that same subject as a non-salaried Privatdozent. Upon completion of the theology degree, however, he also began to offer courses on the Old Testament. In 1841 he was promoted to associate professor (extraordinarius) of theology but soon thereafter he accepted a position at Rostock, where he served for three years (1842–45). Here he began his custom of hosting a weekly “theological tea” for students at his home, where they would discuss pressing theological issues and analyze classics of the devotional life. His wife, Charlotte (née Lahmeyer), whom he had married in 1835, also participated in these conversations. Perhaps he and his wife treated these students as surrogate children, since they had none of their own. In 1845 Hofmann accepted a call back to his alma mater, where he was made full professor (ordinarius) of theology, lecturing mainly on the Old and New Testaments, but also on Christian ethics, dogmatics, and theological encyclopedia. Erlangen would remain the center of his life and work until his death on December 20, 1877, just one day before his sixty-seventh birthday. According to colleagues who were present, he died as he was reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm in Hebrew.6 3 Johannes v. Hofmann, letter to Franz Delitzsch, in Theologische Briefe der Professoren Delitzsch und v. Hofmann, ed. D. Wilhelm Volck (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1891), 37–38. 4 Given the similarities between Hofmann’s idealistic conception of history and that of Hegel’s, the latter seems to have had a greater impact on the Bavarian than Hofmann himself was willing to acknowledge. 5 Hofmann’s historical dissertation, completed in 1835, analyzes the war of Antiochus IV (“Epiphanes”) against Ptolemy VI. Hofmann’s theological dissertation, which he completed in 1838, challenges the messianic interpretation of Psalm 110 while at the same time defending its Davidic authorship. 6 Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin-Luther Verlag, 1993), 81.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

191

During the thirty-five years he taught in that Bavarian town Hofmann became the key figure in the so-called “Erlangen School” of theology.7 This complex theological tradition centered in a circle of professors whose ideas and actions were defined broadly on the basis of the experience of baptismal regeneration, the certainty of personal faith, a critical appropriation of the Lutheran Confessions, and an organic-historical view of the development of the Bible, the church, and the church’s confessions.8 Hofmann stood out in this circle for many reasons, not least because he was its most prolific author. In addition to writing a number of articles and smaller texts, his three main writing projects were the twovolume Weissagung und Erfüllung (“Prophecy and Fulfillment”), the two-volume Der Schriftbeweis (“Scriptural Proof”), and the unfinished, eleven-volume commentary on the whole of the New Testament.9 Another important work from this period, Hofmann’s lectures on biblical hermeneutics (originally delivered in 1860 but published posthumously in 1880), is the only significant theological

7 The literature on the Erlangen theological tradition is extensive, but in general see Philipp Bachmann, “Die Stellung und Eigenart der sogenannten Erlanger Theologie,” in Festgabe für Theodor Zahn (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1928), 1–17; Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie; Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, Die Lutherische Kirche, Geschichte und Gestalten, Band 7 (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984); Robert Jelke, “Die Eigenart der Erlanger Theologie,” Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift 41 (1930): 19–63; Hermann Jordan, “Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Erlanger theologischen Fakultät,” Beiträge zur Bayern Kirchengeschichte 26 (1920): 49–68; Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Die Erlanger Theologie: Grundlinien ihrer Entwicklung im Rahmen der Geschichte der theologischen Fakultät, 1743– 1877 (Munich: Evang. Presseverband für Bayern, 1960); Max Keller-Hüschemenger, Das Problem der Heilsgewißheit in der Erlanger Theologie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur Frage des theologischen Subjektivismus in der gegenwärtigen evangelischen Theologie (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlag, 1963); Hans Pöhlmann, “Die Erlanger Theologie: Ihre Geschichte und ihre Bedeutung,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 80 (1907): 390–433, 535–563; Notger Slenczka, “Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann: ‘Eine neue Weise, alte Wahrheit zu lehren’,” in Theologen des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Peter Neuner and Gunther Wenz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 144–164; Klaus Sturm, “Die integrierende Funktion der Ekklesiologie in der lutherisch-konfessionellen Dogmatik des Erlangen Kreises” (Th.D. diss., Erlangen University, 1976); and Friedrich Wilhelm Winter, Die Erlanger Theologie und die Lutherforschung im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1995). 8 In addition to Hofmann, this Erlangen circle included Adolph von Harless (1806–79), J.W.F. Höfling (1802–53); Gottfried Thomasius (1802–75); Heinrich Schmid (1811–85); Franz Delitzsch (1813–90); Theodosius Harnack (1817–89); Gerhard von Zezschwitz (1825–86); and Franz von Frank (1827–94). 9 See Johannes von Hofmann, Weissagung und Erfüllung im Alten und im Neuen Testamente, 2 vols. (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1841, 1844) [hereafter abbreviated as “WE”]; idem, Der Schriftbeweis, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1857–1860) [hereafter abbreviated as “SB”]; and idem, Die heilige Schrift Neuen Testaments zusammenhängend untersucht, 11 vols., 2d ed., ed. W. Volck (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1896) [hereafter abbreviated as “HS”]. Part two of Der Schriftbeweis was divided into two books. The actual number of books that comprise Hofmann’s commentary on the New Testament is seventeen (approximately two million words on 5,910 pages). Volumes nine, ten, and eleven were published posthumously.

192

Matthew L. Becker

hermeneutics written between Schleiermacher and Joachim Wach (d. 1955) and the only text of his that has been translated into English.10 Other activities filled Hofmann’s life as well. Given his intellectual output and administrative abilities he became “the acknowledged head of the entire university faculty.”11 On six separate occasions he was chosen to be vice–chancellor (Prorektor), more times than any other Erlangen professor in the nineteenth century. (The Bavarian king always served as Rektor.) In union with Johann Wichern (1808–81) he conducted welfare work, participated in civic endeavors, and served on the Bavarian Central Committee for Foreign Missions. He was also secretary of the Erlangen Women’s Guild and a co-founder of a local women’s shelter. For nearly three decades he was a regular contributor to, and later editor of, Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, a major confessional Lutheran theological journal, and a contributor to Wochenschrift der Fortschrittspartei in Bayern, the magazine of the liberal political party in which he was a leading participant. Between 1863 and 1869 he served in the Bavarian Parliament as a representative of this “Progressive Party,” whose main political goals were the formation of a unified German state (a constitutional government of freely elected representatives), the defense of individual human rights and freedoms, and the clear separation between the church and the state.12 Needless to say, his development as a political liberal (who favored a constitutional monarchy) was out of step with the majority of German Lutheran theologians at that time, especially Hengstenberg, whose pro-monarchical “throne and altar” views placed him at the other end of the political spectrum. Clearly Hofmann was “an uncommonly active and many-sided man.”13

10 See Johann von Hofmann, Interpreting the Bible, trans. Christian Preus, intro. Otto Piper (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1959). The original German edition is Biblische Hermeneutik, ed. Wilhelm Volck (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1880) [hereafter this edition will be abbreviated as “BH”]. 11 Martin Schellbach, Theologie und Philosophie bei v. Hofmann. Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1935), 26. 12 See Wilfried Behr, Politischer Liberalismus und kirchliches Christentum: Studien zum Zusammenhang von Theologie und Politk bei Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810– 1877) (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1995), 195–314. 13 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1973), 602.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

193

Distinctive Themes Hofmann’s contributions to the history of Christian theology fall into three areas: (1) theological method; (2) biblical hermeneutics; and (3) Trinitarian kenosis and atonement.14

(1) Theological Method As a post-Enlightenment thinker who recognized the legitimacy of Kant’s critiques of traditional theological knowledge, Hofmann devoted considerable attention to epistemological and methodological issues in theology, but he did so almost entirely in relation to the interpretation of biblical texts and to questions about the nature of the Bible and its authority. For him, the most comprehensive discipline in the university is Christian theology since its object embraces God (the source and goal of all that is) and the world. This object is given to the Christian theologian in “the relationship of God and humanity as it is in Christ.”15 Since Hofmann maintained that this relationship is present and personal, he sometimes described the object of Christian theology as “the present factual situation [Tatbestand] of the community [Gemeinschaft] between God and humanity that is mediated in Jesus Christ” (SB 1:7). Since Hofmann also emphasized that this community/communion or relationship is trans-subjective and historical, he described the object as “the historically present relationship between God and humanity in Christ” (DVW 381). Each of the dimensions of this object, both the personal-experiential and trans-personal/historical, is contained within what Hofmann called the Christian Tatbestand (“given situation,” “subject matter,” “given state of affairs,” “given reality”), that which “makes the Christian a Christian.”16 By using this term Hofmann sought to identify and comprehend both the existential immediacy 14 For a more detailed analysis of these themes, see my monograph, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History: The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann (New York: T&T Clark, 2004). 15 Johannes v. Hofmann, “Dogmatic Lectures of 1842,” based on a transcription by Christoph Luthardt and published in two parts in Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben 10 (1889): 39–53, 99–111 (here 40) [hereafter this transcription will be abbreviated as “DVL”]. Hofmann’s dogmatische Vorlesungen have also been handed down in a summary by Wapler, which he included as an appendix to his biography (see Wapler, Johannes von Hofmann, 379–396 [hereafter abbreviated as “DVW”]). Wapler’s summary is inferior to the more complete version by Luthardt. A third (handwritten) summary is located in the Erlangen University library archives. 16 Johannes von Hofmann, Die Encyklopädie der Theologie, ed. H.J. Bestmann (Nördlingen: C. H. Beck, 1879), 51 [hereafter this text is abbreviated as “ET”].

194

Matthew L. Becker

and the historical mediation of the communion with God that has “its permanence and continuance [Bestand] in the present Christ” (SB 1:10). Thus the Tatbestand of Christianity is not merely a past reality, but through the living “personal and effectual working [Selbstbetätigung] of the Risen One himself” it is also “an effect in the present” that involves the Christian believer (SB 1:6; ET 7). This “effective working” [Wirkung] of the risen Christ alone establishes the Christian in a “certain,” “immediate” (existential), “personal,” relationship with God (SB 1:10). The faith of the individual Christian theologian, which all Christians have in common, refers then to “an immediately certain truth” in the present existence of the theologian (SB 1:11). Although this faith is indeed mediated through the Scriptures, the proclamation of the Word and the administration the means of grace in the church, once it is given it “gains its independent existence in the Christian” (DVL 40) and is no longer tied exclusively to the trans-personal, mediating authority of a local Christian congregation, an institutional church, or any other external authority (including other university disciplines, e. g., history, critical philosophy). Theology is a truly free scholarly discipline, free in God, only when precisely that which makes a Christian to be a Christian, his own independent relationship to God, makes the theologian to be a theologian through disciplined self-knowledge and self-expression, when I the Christian am for me the theologian the unique material of my scholarship (SB 1:10).

Since this statement has been frequently misunderstood to imply an extreme subjectivism in Hofmann’s theology, one needs to stress that he was not here referring to himself in isolation from the Christian Tatbestand that is also external to himself, nor was he ignoring the means by which his faith had been mediated to him. Rather, he was simply acknowledging that the Christian theologian—as a baptized Christian believer—thinks in a specific Tatbestand and does not think about it as if it were a mere external “thing” that one could keep at a distance. In other words, Hofmann was highlighting the existential dimension of theology and pointing out that theological thinking is of necessity self-involved reflection, since it focuses on the relationship between the theologian and God and seeks to make responsible inquiry into the basis of that relationship. The conviction of Hofmann was that theological reflection involves the mutual penetration and relation of the two dimensions of the Christian Tatbestand, namely, both the present faith experience of the Christian believer and the history of God’s relationship with humanity as it has developed in ancient Israel, in the ministry of Jesus, and in the Christian church. The task of the theologian is to investigate this Tatbestand systematically (as it is given in the Christian’s own faith) and historically (as it is given in the Christian Scriptures through the church) so as to confirm, and, if necessary, correct the understanding of one’s personal faith in

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

195

God. This was the aim of Hofmann’s Der Schriftbeweis, wherein he initially analyzes his personal Christian faith and then proceeds to develop and express (in nearly 2000 pages) the implications of this faith as it is clarified in Scripture.

(2) Biblical Hermeneutics Hofmann faulted biblicists (like Hengstenberg) and rationalists (like David F. Strauss) for neglecting the historical peculiarity of Christianity and for failing to recognize that its historic past can only be properly understood on the basis of the present reality of one’s living, existential relationship with the living and freely active God. Christianity is not simply a type of reason or moral knowledge, as in Lessing’s historical-revelational scheme or in Kant’s “religion within the limits of reason alone,” nor is it a collection of ahistorical doctrinal teachings, as in Hengstenberg’s theology. Instead, Christianity is primarily “a matter of historical experience” that is truly understandable only by means of one’s personal faith in the living God. Thus, the proper examination of the Bible and its history does not occur within a general or presuppositionless perspective but “within the perspective of one who is a regenerated Christian” (BH 24). For Hofmann, a “purely historical, non-dogmatic interpretation of the Bible is impossible”; instead, every approach to the Bible is guided by underlying philosophical assumptions that are not theologically neutral. The question is whether or not one’s perspective accords with the essential theological subject matter of the Scriptures. He thus emphasized the need for a theological hermeneutic that alone could provide the proper access to the truth and reality to which the Bible as a whole bears witness. He felt this need was all the more necessary in view of the disintegration, if not the outright abandonment, of the dogmatic unity of the biblical canon that frequently occurs when one views the Scriptures merely as a collection of differing historical sources. For Hofmann the key to understanding any given text in Scripture is recognizing its place in the overall unity of the biblical canon as a whole. In his view, the central fact of the Christian faith is not merely that God has given the world a book, but that God is seeking a relationship with humanity by means of that book, which witnesses to God’s actions in history. It is this coherence between the historicality of Scripture and the historicality of God’s actions in history that makes the Bible into a unified whole. In order to express this historicality of Scripture, Hofmann defined the Bible as “the monument of salvation history [Heilsgeschichte]” (SB 1:25). In his view, the Bible is a single narrative that has its center or focus in Jesus and provides the description of God’s historical self-giving to humanity; i. e., it is the narrative

196

Matthew L. Becker

history of God’s establishing communion with humanity, first through the people of Israel and then in one man from that people, namely, Jesus. It is this specific content that makes the Bible as a whole the object of a special kind of interpretation (BH 8, 28). So, for Hofmann, the specific theological content of the Bible is Heilsgeschichte, a concept that has both a “narrative” and an “historical” dimension. God’s history is a “narrative history”; it is the narrative of God’s self-giving in history. Indeed, Hofmann understood the whole of biblical history, the history of Israel, Jesus, and the formation of the church, as the self-revelation of God who is love. This history is the key toward understanding the Bible as a whole and, more importantly, understanding God’s relationship with humanity as a whole (SB 1:25). “The specific feature of Holy Scripture is precisely this: that all history is interpreted and recorded therein as transpiring between God and humanity. Its purpose is not to provide exact knowledge of the external course of events but rather to point out the significance which certain events have for the salvation realized in Christ” (BH 231). Scripture is precisely this interpretation of history done in faith, which the contemporary biblical interpreter should also recognize and appreciate (BH 35ff., 82ff., HS 1:55–56). One assumption of Hofmann’s hermeneutics is that the past history that one encounters in the Bible can only be understood on the basis of the present, Christian Tatbestand, which is the creation of the risen Christ, who is himself the living connection between the present and the past. This present reality opens the Christian to a proper understanding of Heilsgeschichte, indeed, to a proper understanding of time and universal history, since Christ is the unity of all time —past, present, and future. In this view, Christ is the center or focus (die Mitte) of universal history; he is its essential content (WE 1:40; cf. DVL 53 and BH 36–39). Since, for Hofmann, the biblical canon as a whole stands in organic relation to Heilsgeschichte as a whole, each biblical statement must be understood in its “organic-historical relation” to the rest of Heilsgeschichte, including its organic relation to the historical Christian community and the preceding history of ancient Israel (WE 1:49). Only after one has a sense of “the biblical whole” is one able, then, to move to an understanding of the particular within the Scriptures (e. g. , words, sentences, paragraphs, pericopes, individual documents, and so on). These particulars will not be understood properly apart from the total context of the biblical “whole.” Thus the task of the biblical interpreter includes the responsibility of discerning how individual elements within the Bible fit within the overall witness to Heilsgeschichte, i. e. , the successive historical stages in God’s relationship with humanity that culminated with the coming of Christ, the development of the church, and the promise of the consummation of creation “on the last day.” Each new stage in the process of Heilsgeschichte is always the development of earlier stages that

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

197

partially prefigure what is to come. Each stage contains within itself a concealed seed of future stages (WE 1:12–16).17

(3) Trinitarian Kenosis and Atonement18 Like Hegel’s and Schelling’s thought, Hofmann’s theology was also informed by the distinctively modern concerns of history, personhood, subjectivity, and relationality. He stressed that God is a Subject who is in the process of historical self-determination by means of divine self-differentiation (as the triune God) in the world for the sake of the salvation of human beings. Hofmann was thus led to rethink classic formulations of the Trinity, Christology, and the atonement, and to articulate these doctrines “in a new way.”19 Hofmann’s attempt at these revisions may indeed be his most significant achievement.20 Hofmann’s articulation of Trinitarian kenosis was part of a broader movement in the early and middle nineteenth century that sought to overcome the difficulties associated with the traditional two-natures doctrine, particularly with regard to affirming the full humanity of Jesus and his truly human personality. The traditional Chalcedonian definition of the two-natures doctrine—“one Christ in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”—was deemed inadequate since it defined Christ on the basis of ontological categories that did not fit well with modern notions of psycho17 One needs to note, at this point, that many of the actual heilsgeschichtliche elements that Hofmann highlighted, i. e., his actual exegetical assertions about Heilsgeschichte, are less than convincing. For example, Hofmann believed that the “necessary facts” of the heilsgeschichtliche whole include as real events: the origin of humanity from an archetypal human pair, the fall into sin through the deception of the original woman by the serpent, a literal millennial reign of Christ, and an eschatological return of the children of Israel to the promised land in Palestine. 18 On Hofmann’s understanding of the atonement and the controversy it generated, see especially Philipp Bachmann, J.Chr.K. v. Hofmanns Versöhnungslehre und der über sie geführte Streit (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1910); Martin Breidert, Die kenotische Christologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1977), 161–184; Gerhard Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1969), 12–78; Paul Wapler, “Die Genesis der Versöhnungslehre Johannes von Hofmanns,” Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift 25 (1914): 167–205; Gunther Wenz, Geschichte der Versöhnungslehre in der evangelischen Theologie der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1984, 1986), 2:46–62; and Otto Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938). These works have laid the foundation for my own analysis. Hein demonstrates that both Hofmann and his opponents attempted to appeal to the Lutheran Confessions in order to settle their disagreements. Wolff demonstrates Hofmann’s important role in sparking a renewal in the study of Luther’s theology in Germany. 19 See Johannes von Hofmann, Schutzschriften für eine neue Weise alte Wahrheit zu lehren, 4 parts (Nördlingen: C.H. Beck, 1856–1859) [hereafter abbreviated as “SS”]. 20 So the conclusion of Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neueren evangelischen Theologie, 5th ed., 5 vols. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975), 5:427.

198

Matthew L. Becker

logical growth and personality development. How can the classical divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence be imparted to the human nature of Jesus without thereby annulling his real humanity? How can the true humanity of Jesus, which is finite and subject to the temporal process of development, be reconciled with the divine Logos, which had been understood to be infinite, eternal, and immutable? In view of these challenges Hofmann sought a solution through his interpretation of Philippians 2:6–7: “…Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of humankind…” Hofmann interpreted the kenosis not merely as a state of humiliation that the incarnate Son of God endured, as in the traditional doctrinal locus, but it is itself the self-limitation of the second person of the Trinity in Jesus. The subject of the kenosis is therefore not the incarnate man but the second person of the Trinity who becomes a man. Similar to the later Dorner, Hofmann grounded the divine kenosis in the love of the triune God for the world.21 Already in his 1842 lectures on dogmatics, which were not published in his lifetime, Hofmann developed the Trinitarian foundation for the person and work of Jesus the Christ. The whole life of Jesus, culminating in his death and resurrection, is best understood as the actualization of the triune God’s self-giving, self-emptying love for humanity. The eternal Trinitarian relationship completes itself in time in the incarnation and life of Jesus for the sake of restoring communion between God and humanity. The fulfilled relationship between God and humanity, pre-figured in the history of Israel that led up to Jesus, but which has now become an historical reality in him, means that Jesus may be called “God” (for example, as the apostles John and Paul do), but only because he stands as a human being within the Trinitarian community of God that fulfills itself in history. For Hofmann the divinity of Jesus is not an assertion about a supposed metaphysical, ahistorical nature, but about Jesus’ historical relation to God the Father, who has sent him into the world to bring the world into communion with God. Hofmann maintained that any statements about the pre-existence or divinity of Jesus must be limited to God’s eternal self-determination toward human beings that fulfills itself historically in Jesus (DVL 49). The pre-existence of Jesus is nothing else than God’s eternal will to be the God of love for humanity, that is, to be God for humanity in Christ from all eternity. God’s decision to be the God-for-humanity was temporalized in Jesus, enabling Jesus to live his life on behalf of the wellbeing and salvation of humankind. 21 See Isaak Dorner, Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration, trans. Robert Williams and Claude Welch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

199

Clearly, Hofmann’s Christology is a “Christology from above,” though he wanted also to take seriously the free determination and development of Jesus’ full and complete human life. So Hofmann affirmed that in the incarnation the historical activity of the eternal God is no longer simply divine action but also the human action of Jesus. Yet Hofmann also affirmed that divine self-determination and personal self-determination cannot be separated in the man Jesus. His self-determination in relation to God, the Creator, and his personal selfdetermination that develops in him as a human being through the effective working of the Holy Spirit have a unity that cannot be undone. Thus, according to Hofmann, the self-giving of the Son of God, far from undermining his freedom and the reality of his humanity, is constitutive of him as a human person. This divine self-giving is the ground of Jesus’ human being and is that which makes him into “the new human being,” the mediator of the new “humanity of God” [die Menschheit Gottes], the one who restores humanity as a whole (SB 1:55). The “completion” of the triune life of God is thus the inclusion of renewed humanity in Christ in God.22 God’s will is that humanity should be God’s own in Jesus Christ, who may be described as “humanity reduced to one.” The historical man Jesus stands for humanity as a whole within the intra-divine relationship (DVL 52). Correspondingly, all human beings are called to define themselves in relation to God, who is “eternal being in the process of becoming,” this God who determines God’s self in history for the sake of humanity (SB 1:35). Through “the man Jesus,” redeemed “human nature has been accepted into the relationship of the three in God” (DVL 52). Through the divine self-emptying or “self-renunciation” God realizes God’s love for humanity (DVL 44) and brings fallen humanity back into proper relationship with himself.

22 Hofmann appears to have been not always consistent regarding the nature of “Trinitarian self-fulfillment” through the incarnation. On the one hand, he sometimes referred to God’s free decision to self-determine God’s self in history as the means to God’s self-fulfillment as the God of love. When speaking this way, “the beginning of history” is a decision of God to allow God’s self to self-differentiate God’s self in history. In this way of thinking, the incarnation is the outcome of God’s self-differentiation in history to be the God who is love. Here Hofmann sounds quite similar to Hegel. On the other hand, Hofmann (less frequently) spoke of the incarnation as God’s free decision to redeem sinful humanity. When speaking this way, Hofmann wanted especially to differentiate himself from the Hegelian concept of the necessity of God’s positing God’s self in an “other” for the sake of fulfilling God’s self. For example, Hofmann states that “if sin had not occurred, the incarnation of the Son would not have been needed in order to realize the eternal will of love of the triune through an historical self-fulfillment of the intra-divine relationship” (SB 2/1:20). This comment does not fit easily with the more dominant view in Hofmann’s theology that from eternity the triune God has freely elected humanity in Jesus Christ. The incarnation is the free decision of God to be the God of love for humanity.

200

Matthew L. Becker

The divine election of humanity in Christ serves as the basis for Hofmann’s understanding of God’s actions in history. God had to establish a “new beginning to history” in order to bring to an end the old history marked by evil, sin, and death. To establish such a “new beginning” God needed to break into the sinful situation of humanity. Such an “in-breaking” was necessary in order to complete God’s eternal will of love for humanity and all creation. This “new beginning” would re-establish God’s eternal will of love for humanity (SB 1:40–42). Since the union of Jesus with the will of God is grounded in the eternal unity of the Trinity, Christ’s self-determination in obedience to God cannot be frustrated by any historical event. The course of history between God and humanity is unequivocally certain from the beginning of creation to its fulfillment in the eschaton. This is not only true in relation to God’s eternal self-determination but also in view of the object of God’s love, namely, humanity as a whole in Christ. The eternal will of God will not be frustrated, even by evil powers or through human sins. Because “the incarnate eternal God could not negate himself, Jesus the man could not sin, his humanly historical will could not contradict his immanent eternally divine will. The eternal God has become a human being precisely because this was the way to certain victory over sin” (SB 2/1:46). According to Hofmann, the salvific work of Jesus is not, as in the orthodox theory, “the fulfillment of an abstract demand according to the scheme of forensic justice, but an historical new creation.”23 [The work of Jesus] does not consist of a row of deeds which produce an abstract metaphysical effect, the condition for God’s graciousness, but it is an interrelationship of life which indeed possesses the highest metaphysical significance, but it possesses this as the immediately living eternal religious power in its concrete historicality. Or dogmatically expressed: Christ’s work is not the forensic production of the condition for grace but the historical realization of the divine will of grace itself.24

In other words, the mission of Jesus was not to appease the wrath of an angry God; his mission was to actualize God’s loving grace for all of creation. Christ put himself under “the consequences of sin” (SB 2/1:35) and placed himself within a life conditioned by those consequences (DVL 52) and thereby made himself one with the fate of humankind. Although such an identification with humanity brought Jesus into conflict with sin, evil, death, and even his heavenly Father—all for the sake of overcoming the alienation between God and sinful humanity (SS 3:27)—by remaining obedient in his calling, even to the point of death at the 23 Hofmann, as quoted from lecture notes by Wapler, “Die Genesis der Versöhnungslehre Johannes von Hofmanns,” 172. 24 Hofmann, as quoted from lecture notes by Wapler, “Die Genesis der Versöhnungslehre Johannes von Hofmanns,” 172. My translation differs slightly from the one in Forde, The LawGospel Debate, 39.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

201

hands of evil men, Jesus fulfilled his prophetic office to bear witness to God’s eternal will of love for humanity. This obedience of Jesus is the most profound meaning of the kenosis of God, who willingly went the way of suffering love for the sake of humanity. By going to that point that was most separated from God, the situation of sinful humanity, the Son of God removed the opposition between God’s eternal love and God’s historical wrath in his own person. Clearly, the historical “contradiction” between God and Christ could be overcome because the “eternal identity of the Trinitarian relationship” serves as its fundamental cause (TE 28). The pre-existent “archetypal world-goal”—one of Hofmann’s preferred ways of referring to the Logos—has determined to proceed out from its transcendent way of being eternal into the temporal way of being a human being in order to establish the divine will of love for temporal human beings. So the obedience of Jesus is not merely “passive,” that is, receiving suffering in himself; it is also “active,” i. e., it is the result of Jesus’ free decision to sacrifice himself, to empty himself of his human life, in his struggle against all that is arrayed against God. While the “personal communion” between the Logos and the Father remains constant, even within the experience of this contradiction (due to human finitude, suffering, and death), the Son of God is obediently selfsacrificial even unto death—the reality that spells a break in the human-divine relationship—so that God the Father might establish by grace a renewed relationship of life between God and humanity. Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the assurance that God has won the ultimate victory over the creaturely forces arrayed against God. Sin and evil spent themselves in their attack on the eternal archetypal world-goal, the historical Son of God, and in the process they were overcome. Just as the first Adam marked the beginning of humanity, so now Christ “the second Adam” marks the beginning of “a new human nature” (DVL 103); indeed, Christ is “the new human being” (DVL 102).25 Thus, for Hofmann, the atonement is not merely the incarnation of the Logos in the man Jesus, nor is it merely the death of Jesus on the cross; rather, the atonement is the whole life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The whole movement of atonement is the Trinitarian, kenotic process by which the new relationship between God and humanity is realized. The effective power at work within this new historical-Trinitarian process is the Spirit. Through the Spirit people participate in the glorified nature of Christ. In this way the Spirit has begun to renew the world in Christ (WE 2:299). To be a Christian is to be aware that one participates in the transfigured or glorified nature of Christ, to be included in his body, the church. Yet Christ’s presence is 25 Cf. Johannes v. Hofmann, “Das Buch ‘Weissagung und Erfüllung im Alten und Neuen Testamente’ in seinem Verhaltnisse zur gegenwartigen Aufgabe der Theologie,” Mecklenburger Kirchenblatt 1 (1844): 57 [hereafter abbreviated as “BWE”].

202

Matthew L. Becker

not ubiquitous: His Lordship over the world is only gradually spreading through the immanent Spirit by means of the church, that is, only to the degree that humanity becomes the humanity of God (SB 2/1:534; 1:55; cf. WE 1:39–40). The fulfillment of that Lordship will only occur at the eschaton, when God will be “all in all.” While we cannot here go into detail about the controversy that surrounded Hofmann’s revisionist understanding of the atonement, needless to say his criticism of the traditional Lutheran understanding of vicarious atonement did not sit well with the other confessional Lutheran theologians of his day. For example, Friedrich A. Philippi (1809–82), professor of theology at Dorpat and Rostock, accused Hofmann of transposing “the objective biblical and ecclesial doctrine of reconciliation and the doctrine of justification” into a subjective key that separates God’s love and God’s holiness.26 Philippi attempted to defend the traditional understanding of vicarious atonement and its juridical framework. In a subsequent treatise Philippi argued that the righteousness of Christ is entirely objective, extra nos, and is merely imputed to the sinner forensically, who then receives such imputation solely by faith.27 For Philippi, the imputation of grace extra nos is distinct from the Thomistic notion of gratia infusa, which he accused Hofmann of holding. Most important, Philippi insisted that God’s law and wrath are grounded in the very justice of God, which is also eternal. Against Philippi Hofmann argued that the juridical framework of the traditional understanding does not account sufficiently for Christ’s patient endurance in his prophetic calling under “the consequences of sin” in order to establish a new humanity in his death and resurrection.28 Likewise, the juridical framework is deficient since it implies that the atonement was the result of a transaction or payment and not the result of a free gift grounded in God’s eternal will of love. The traditional understanding of the vicarious atonement is also conceptually weak in that it does not indicate how the work of Christ has actually changed the relationship between humanity and God. Furthermore, in the old scheme of vicarious atonement, Christian faith is directed to a past event. This orientation of faith, however, is incapable of conceptualizing how this faith is mediated in the present through the risen Christ, who establishes individuals in a new relation26 Friedrich Philippi, Commentar über den Brief Pauli an die Römer, 2d ed. (Erlangen: Heyder & Zimmer, 1856), x–xi. Others who criticized Hofmann’s views included Dorner (see Divine Immutability, 63); Gottfried Thomasius, Das Bekenntnis der lutherischen Kirche von der Versöhnung und die Versöhnungslehre D.Chr.K. v. Hofmanns (Erlangen: Theodore Bläsing, 1857); and Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 2 vols. (Erlangen: Bläsing, 1862), 1:91– 149. 27 Friedrich Philippi, Herr Dr. von Hofmann gegenüber der lutherischen Versöhnungs- und Rechtfertigungslehre (Frankfurt/Erlangen: Heyder & Zimmer, 1856). 28 See Johannes v. Hofmann, “Begrundete Abweisung eines nicht begrundeten Vorwurfs,” Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche 31 (1856): 175–92.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

203

ship with God. In the old system, faith merely accepts the knowledge of past events and thus is conceptually removed from active participation in the benefits of those events in the present. According to Hofmann, only in the present Tatbestand are past, present, and future brought into an organic unity in the risen Christ. Most problematic of all, for Hofmann, was the traditional view that God’s righteousness must first be appeased or satisfied before God can be loving and merciful toward humanity. Through a series of four Schutzschriften (“Defensive writings”), Hofmann responded to his critics and explained his reasons for reformulating the doctrine of the atonement.29 He was particularly concerned to give reasons for his critique of the traditional understanding of the wrath of God. To be sure, Hofmann acknowledged that Jesus entered into the opposition between the love of God and the wrath of God, but his entrance into this opposition involved only an “apparent contradiction,” since the personal communion between the Father and the Son remained constant, grounded in the eternal self-determination of God toward humankind (DVL 103). The historical wrath of God is unequivocally subordinate to the eternally and historically fulfilled divine will of love, which cannot be frustrated even by sin and evil. Because the love of God itself is directed to the creation of the “newly begun humanity” in Christ, this new beginning must develop at the same time that the divine wrath is vented against sins (SS 1:7). This means that the new relationship between God and humanity could not be established without bringing the old creation, marked by sin and death, to an end. Such an end, Hofmann argued, has occurred in Jesus, who has accomplished the expiation [Sühnung] of sin in his own suffering, death, and resurrection (SS 1:17). While the kenotic Christ came to that situation that put him most at odds with God the Father, this separation between the Father and the Son was not the work of the Father or Son, but the work of Satan against the Son. Hofmann could never say that God the Father put Jesus, God’s Son, to death on the cross. To prove his points, Hofmann conducted his own study of Luther’s writings to try to demonstrate that Luther’s understanding of justification did not need to be 29 Hofmann’s first “defensive writing” appeared in 1856, the year before the second edition of the Schriftbeweis. The second Schutzschrift appeared in 1857, the third in 1859, and the fourth a year later. In the second edition of the Schriftbeweis, Hofmann included references to the traditional language concerning the “wrath of God,” but he reinterpreted the wrath to coincide with his understanding of kenosis. See also Paul Wapler, “Die Theologie Hofmanns in ihrem Verhältnis zu Schellings positive Philosophie,” Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift 25 (1914): 714. More recently, Robert Schultz has attacked Hofmann’s theology for reasons similar to Thomasius’. See Robert Schultz, Gesetz und Evangelium in der lutherischen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1958), 110–120. Contrary to Kantzenbach, Schultz emphasizes the differences among the Erlangen theologians, especially the contrast between Harless and Hofmann, and argues that Hofmann’s theology was generally destructive of Lutheran theology, since it rejected the vicarious atonement.

204

Matthew L. Becker

tied to the traditional Lutheran formulation of vicarious satisfaction and that Luther himself had often spoken of Christ’s death and resurrection as a victory over Satan’s attack upon Christ (SS 2:23–83). The eternal Son of God has become a human being in order to do battle against Satan and the tyrannical powers of sin, death, and evil, in order to win the victory for all humanity.30 Luther’s doctrine of justification does not require a theory of vicarious atonement (SS 2:35–39). Hofmann was particularly attracted to Luther’s congregational hymn, “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice” (Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gemein), whose ten verses recount “how God’s right arm the vict’ry won.”31 Despite Hofmann’s best efforts over the better part of a decade to persuade his opponents that his view grappled seriously with the necessity of Christ’s kenotic death on the cross, they were never reconciled to Hofmann’s “new way to teach the old truth.”32 After a decade of sometimes bitter argument, general exhaustion finally led the principals to give up on each other. “The opponents had exhausted their respective arguments and new problems crowded into their field of vision…”33 Hofmann turned to his last great work, a commentary on the individual parts of the New Testament canon, which remained unfinished at his death.

Evaluation While it would be tempting from a post-Enlightenment perspective, working with the hermeneutical principles that have resulted from the rise of historical criticism, to dismiss Hofmann’s entire theological enterprise on the basis of his naïve exegetical decisions and meta-historical/idealist framework, one should attempt to resist this for the sake of Hofmann’s basic theological concern, the relation of 30 Cf. Hofmann’s reading of Luther’s theology at this point with that of Gustav Aulén, Christus Victor, trans. A.G. Hebert (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 101–122. The latter does not treat Hofmann’s atonement theory, even though the “fact that Hofmann set Luther against orthodoxy on the question of atonement was in itself vitally important not only for the subsequent history of the debate but for the history of modern theology as well. It meant that the argument about the atonement would become inextricably involved with the argument about Luther’s theology” (Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate, 64). 31 Cf. Evangelical Lutheran Worship #594 (missing two of the verses). 32 See Wenz, Geschichte, 2:59–62. More irenic in tone, but just as critical of Hofmann’s understanding of “sacrifice” was his friend, Delitzsch, whose commentary on the book of Hebrews was written partly to refute Hofmann’s rejection of the orthodox understanding of vicarious satisfaction. See Franz Delitzsch, Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebräer. Mit archäologischen und dogmatischen Excursen über das Opfer und die Versöhnung (Leipzig: 1857; ET: Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, trans. Thomas Kingsbury [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1868]). 33 Wenz, 2:60.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

205

the triune God to human beings in historical reality. While Hofmann worked with “a first naiveté” when he was interpreting the protological and eschatological scriptural materials—and thus the symbol had not yet “given rise to thought” in every instance of his biblical and theological studies—this serious deficiency does not necessarily invalidate the potentially important theological positions he took with regard to his doctrine of God, especially those which appear to have anticipated later theological developments.34 Just as Hofmann’s Trinitarian ideas place him in the center of the most creative theologians between Hegel and Barth, so Hofmann’s attempts at Christological reconstruction put him in the center of the most creative theologians between Schleiermacher and Ritschl. Hofmann’s efforts to articulate an adequate understanding of the implication of God’s relationality to God’s nature, and to give priority to divine love over divine power/ justice, clearly establishes him as an important precursor to several recent theologians.35 Moreover, Hofmann affirmed that theology is about community with God and others and involves the totality of the world. The grace of God that is grounded in God’s being-in-becoming in history has implications for the history of all humanity. Christianity is not merely about the individual Christian’s relation to God; rather, God’s relation to the Christian necessarily involves the Christian in communion with other human beings. Trinitarian historicality led Hofmann in a comprehensive, humanitarian, and even political direction. Like Rudolf Bultmann and his teacher, Adolf Schlatter, Hofmann also drew attention to the necessity for an existential, personal relationship to the content (Sache) of the Christian Tatbestand. The interpreter cannot avoid a personal relationship with that which is interpreted, if one wishes to gain a fuller understanding of that “other.” The interpreter is not a tabula rasa on which the Bible can paint itself, but he or she enters into the process of interpretation as the one he or she is. Indeed, the process of interpretation is both a seeking to understand that which is other than oneself and a seeking of self-understanding. “The 34 Wapler correctly noted that Hofmann had “a very sharp mind, but it was at the same time a naïve mind” (Wapler, Johannes v. Hofmann, 25). Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between a precritical “first naiveté” and a post-critical “second naiveté” regarding biblical symbols and myths. See, for example, Ricoeur’s conclusion (“The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought”) in The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 347–357. 35 For example, David Tracy states that “the central theological question of God’s nature in our period” is “how, most adequately, to understand the divine relationality” (David Tracy, “Approaching the Christian Understanding of God,” Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John Galvin [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991], 143). Tracy continues, “On the one hand, the recovery of the centrality of the Trinitarian understanding of God is the prime instance of the importance of the concept of relationality. This is especially the case in those theologians who have rethought the intrinsic unity of the ‘economic’ and ‘immanent’ Trinity (Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, et al.)” (ibid., 143).

206

Matthew L. Becker

knowledge and expression of Christianity must be above all the self-knowledge and self-expression of the Christian” (SB 1:10). Thus Hofmann articulated a form of the well-known hermeneutical circle: through one’s encounter with the biblical texts one discovers one’s pre-understanding (e. g., one’s self-knowledge in faith) confirmed to a certain degree, yet never to the point that one’s pre-understanding is simply confirmed in toto. As long as Hofmann maintained a provisionality to his theological self-understanding and did not attempt some form of “rational proof” or “internal security,” he was on firmer theological ground.36 What about Hofmann’s conception of Heilsgeschichte? Is it not the case that “the center” of Heilsgeschichte (i. e., a Christian understanding of world history on the basis of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus) is no longer as sure and certain as Hofmann thought? Nietzsche’s questioning of all such narratives clearly articulated the crisis of consciousness about time and reality that many have experienced since the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Many today still agree with Yeats that “the center cannot hold.”37 While Hofmann’s original conception of Heilsgeschichte is problematic— given its idealist form and speculative metaphysical content—one could respond on his behalf that his understanding also recognized the presence of disruption and incompleteness in the contingencies of history. His conception of Heilsgeschichte is not a simple and progressive development; rather, it is a development that is also marked by conflict and opposition between God and fallen creation 36 Both Bultmann and Barth accused Hofmann of being caught in a vicious circle. “…[T]here is no mistaking the peculiarity in Hofmann’s proof from Scripture: that what is supposedly to provide the proof, Scripture, is in reality what is also to be proved. Or, to put it the other way around, what is supposed to be proved, the content of Christian experience, has also to provide the proof in the form of a scriptural proof which is in effect no more than a further expansion of the circle of Christian experience. His scriptural proof suffers from the fact that it is only an extended proof from experience and his proof from experience from the fact that it is itself already a proof from Scripture…” (Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 614–615 [translation altered]). Cf. Rudolf Bultmann, “Weissagung und Erfüllung,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 47 (1950): 260–83 (ET: “Prophecy and Fulfillment,” pages 50–75 in Old Testament Hermeneutics, ed. Claus Westermann, trans. James C.G. Craig [Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963]). Thielicke rightly notes that both Barth and Bultmann failed to recognize the familiar “hermeneutical circle” in Hofmann’s theological method. See Helmut Thielicke, Modern Faith and Thought, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 240. See also Joachim Wach, Die theologische Hermeneutik von Schleiermacher bis Hofmann, vol. 2 of Das Verstehen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1929), 365–367. Wach maintained that Hofmann saw, correctly, that each interpreter is incapable of freeing himself or herself from “the hermeneutical circle,” i. e., that such a circle “is undoubtedly a given for all interpretation.” For further analysis of Hofmann’s significant contribution to the development of theological hermeneutics, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinscheimer and Donald Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1998), 523–25. 37 W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1921), reprinted in The Humanistic Tradition, 4th ed., 6 vols., ed. Gloria Fiero (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 6:52.

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

207

and between church and world. Just as Schelling left room for the irrational, evil, and the judgment of God in the unfolding drama of history, so too did Hofmann. Furthermore, one could point out that even Nietzsche and post-structuralist historians involve themselves in “totalizing” discourse and the formation of meta-narratives similar to Hofmann’s own. Recent criticism of so-called “new historicism” is similar to Hofmann’s criticism of old historicism: the historian or biblical interpreter always operates out of an inescapable, totalizing framework that is constantly in need of revision.38 Although Hofmann wanted to address history’s fundamental questions, he did not claim to have comprehended and explained an “end” that has already been reached, as Hegel did, and upon which he could then only look backwards. Hofmann was aware that history runs in all sorts of directions and creates confusion. Precisely for this reason there is the need for a focal point, a “center,” the Mitte, which in faith provides a perspective on the whole of reality. For Hofmann this “center” is the Risen Christ, “the end” of history that has been given “in the middle.” What about Hofmann’s kenotic Christology? Here, too, there are problems. First, Hofmann was not really that concerned with the problem of the historicality of the Christ event. Although Hofmann wanted to take seriously the whole “pattern” of Jesus’ life as disclosed in the New Testament writings, including the witness to his resurrection, he was not generally interested in a Bild Jesu in the sense of critical historical investigation into the life of Jesus. The one exception to this is his lengthy review of the work of Strauss and Renan.39 For Hofmann Jesus is an historic human being, whose life is understood to be the consequence of the eternal will of God. In this regard, Hofmann anticipated the theological work of Martin Kähler (1835–1912). While it is incorrect to say that a “picture of Jesus” was superfluous to his Christology, what really counted for him was the dogmatic judgment that this human life constitutes the center of God’s life with the world. Although Hofmann held that Jesus’ earthly existence defines who God is as love, he had little interest in clarifying the conditions of that earthly life by means of critical historical investigation of the potential sources of that life. Second, in spite of all his intentions to the contrary, does not Hofmann’s Christology, which speaks of Christ’s humanity so unremittingly in terms of selfrenunciation, kenosis, suffering, and death—all within a rather idealistic metanarrative—lead ineluctably to a docetic Christ? 40 Is this not the fate of all “high” Christologies that start “from above”? Because of his divine mission does not the 38 “In the tendency to profess an empiricism free from all metaphysical presuppositions, we see only the curious attempt to jump over one’s own shadow” (Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1922), 670. 39 Johannes v. Hofmann, “Renan, Strauss, Schenkel,” Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche 48 (1864): 81–122. 40 So Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate, 72.

208

Matthew L. Becker

human Jesus almost vanish within the eternal Self ? Does Jesus’ historical existence, its contingency, get robbed of its significance and lead in the direction of Monophysitism? This seems to be the case especially when Hofmann speaks of “humanity” as a whole in Christ. In what sense is it correct or meaningful to say that “humanity” is in Jesus? Even if one could defend such a notion, does not this idea rob Jesus of his true, concrete, historical human existence? Related to these questions is the question about Hofmann’s knowledge of God. Does not Hofmann’s theology claim to know too much about the inner life of God, despite his intentions to base his theology strictly on the witness of scripture to God’s historical revelation that centers on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? While a detailed response to these questions cannot here be made in Hofmann’s defense, one could respond by saying, again, that Hofmann’s intentions were to take Jesus’ full and true humanity quite seriously as revealing the inner life of God. It is not that Hofmann began with speculative knowledge of God and then sought to apply that knowledge to Jesus. That would be to fall back into the very trap created by the traditional language of “two natures” in Christ. Rather, Hofmann’s procedure was to work back from Jesus Christ, especially the witness to his resurrection, into the Trinitarian source of Christ’s life. Furthermore, Hofmann’s intentions were to focus on the work of Christ and to infer from the work about the person. Who must this person be for him to act this way, to be acted upon in the way of his resurrection from the dead? Thus, for Hofmann, the union between Jesus and the second person of the Trinity is at the level of Christ’s human existence and the actions of Jesus, including also his resurrection from the dead. In other words, the divine and the human are conjoined in Christ in enacting that particular life of self-renunciation, self-emptying, obedient love which is the mode of existence of the second person of the Trinity. For a human being to live life according to this eternal will of love in no way prevents this particular human being from existing in every respect as a fully human person, but neither does it preclude that same human person from being identified as the person of the eternal Logos of God. This well reflects Hofmann’s concern to emphasize Christ’s acceptance of the most realistic aspects of alienated human existence into his own life. Despite the above negative features of his Christology, we may take note of a few positive aspects, indispensable to his Trinitarian theology. First, a kenotic Christology, grounded in the Trinity, is the underlying structure of Hofmann’s approach to the incarnation and atonement, and thus his theology anticipates the renewed appreciation for the notion of kenosis that is evident in the work of some recent theologians.41 Hofmann’s understanding of the atonement is grounded in 41 See, for example, Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1978); Lucien Richard, Christ: The Self-Emptying of God (New York: Paulist, 1996); and C. Stephen Evans,

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

209

the concrete form of the triune God’s self-giving and saving love in the man Jesus. While Hofmann did not hesitate to ground the life and ministry of Jesus in the eternal God, he criticized all Eutychian-like Christologies that de-emphasize the full and complete humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. For Hofmann the existence of the human being Jesus as the historical existence of the person of the Logos is a definitively complete human existence whose every human characteristic, including a human mind and will, is actually preserved and perfected, not circumvented or supplanted, by coming into existence. Indeed, Hofmann argued that the eternal Self that is the second person of the Trinity is enclosed in the humanity of Jesus. While Hofmann sometimes gives the impression that he was still working within the traditional “two natures” paradigm, most often he wrote of the man Jesus as perfectly establishing the eternal love of God for the world, as obediently enacting the divine sonship in human form. By so transposing Christological understanding from essentialist to actualist and relational terms, Hofmann attempted to ease the kind of metaphysical discomfort with essentialist language in Christology which theologians have felt since Schleiermacher and Strauss. For Hofmann the whole life of Jesus “actualizes” and “completes” the selfgiving and self-emptying of the triune God. Thus, by conceiving the incarnation and life of Jesus in terms of a particular “divine self-giving,” Hofmann was ensuring that his Christology did not become separated from its Trinitarian basis. In other words, he wanted to emphasize that it is not undifferentiated divine self-communication which results in the incarnation and life of Jesus, but rather it is the particular mode of existence of the eternal person which Jesus lives out in his human existence as the Son of God. In addition to its Trinitarian strengths, Hofmann’s approach has the advantage that it does not transmute Jesus into a quasi-divinity. The humanity of Christ is itself the living action of the self-giving, self-emptying of the Logos that is grounded in the Father’s love. Second, Hofmann stressed correctly that since history is the self-fulfillment of the triune God and since God loves humanity eternally in Christ, there is no other relation of God vis-à-vis humanity than that of love. Thus, Hofmann’s Christology is inclusive and universal. The salvation that God wills eternally is oriented to humanity as a whole in Jesus Christ. Because God has assumed a Trinitarian form in history for the sake of redeeming sinful humanity, a form in which the second person of the Trinity has “emptied himself” into the man Jesus, the divine will of love is realized in history. Everything that occurs after this kenosis is only an extension and consequence Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God (Vancouver, BC: Regent College, 2009); and Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, new rev. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2011).

210

Matthew L. Becker

of this basic “starting point” in the history of God’s Trinitarian dissimilarity. In this context, the death of Jesus is understood as that moment of “greatest opposition” within the development of Trinitarian dissimilarity, but not as a “vicarious atonement” as in classic Lutheran theology. Thus, in contrast to classic Lutheran Orthodoxy, Hofmann took the whole revealed life of Jesus, not merely his death on the cross, as the revelation of God’s love for humanity. The whole ministry of Jesus is the place of God’s saving activity. The life of Jesus is the basis for the Christian’s confidence in God’s selfdetermination and relationality to be the God of love. The radical self-emptying of Jesus is not merely necessitated by the sins of a fallen world but also reflects the utterly kenotic reality of the eternal Trinitarian self-giving. Third, it follows that Christ’s active ministry cannot fit into the classic juridical framework wherein Christ suffered divine punishment instead of humanity. God emptied God’s self in Jesus in order that Jesus might fulfill his own calling. Thus, the righteousness of Christ is something more than a mere fulfilling of God’s divine law; the righteousness of Christ includes his free obedience to empty himself in love, to take the form of a slave within the conditions of humanity, to suffer, and to die for the sake of re-uniting fallen humanity with God. The whole ministry of Jesus is not, therefore, merely the fulfilling of the divine law in response to the divine justice; rather it is principally the historical fulfillment of the eternal will of love. Fourth and finally, Hofmann stressed that God is always a free and active Subject and never a fixed object. The freedom of God is grounded in God’s love for the world. The freedom of God also informed Hofmann’s understanding of the person and work of Christ. Christ is the historical revelation of the eternal Self that is the triune God. As such, he is the revelation of the Father’s love for all creation in the power of the Spirit. God’s freedom to give God’s self in the man Jesus is the corollary to the affirmation that God is love. But the freedom of God also means for Hofmann that Christology is more about the free obedience of Jesus to the Father than about the ontology of Jesus. Christ’s humanity, while remaining perfectly human in its essence, is lived out according to the love that God has for the world, a mode of existence that is the perfect establishment in human terms of the divine love. Here, Hofmann’s notion of “person” may prove helpful in comprehending the mission of Jesus, the Son of God, that is grounded in the Trinity. Jesus is definitively “person,” and since all humanity is oriented toward fulfillment in him, each human being receives his or her own fulfilled personhood by participating in communion with Christ. God in Christ is “self” giving in this sense, too. Overall, Hofmann’s theological work remains a fruitful resource for contemporary theological reflection. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the development of Protestant theology in the second half of the nineteenth century

Johannes C.K. von Hofmann (1810–1877)

211

was considerable and perhaps crucial. He certainly belongs among those theologians about whom Barth was thinking when he wrote: [I]n dealing with the theologians of the 19th century, at least with the best among them, we are faced with a type of person that merits our highest respect. This in itself is reason enough for our listening to them even today.42

42 Karl Barth, “Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century,” The Humanity of God, trans. John Newton Thomas and Thomas Wieser (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), 17.

Christoph Barnbrock

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)*

On January 15, 1837, twenty-five year old Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther was ordained in Bräunsdorf (Saxony).1 On this occasion he preached on Jeremiah 1:6–8. Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of that event, which he did while sick in bed, was the last major occurrence in his life before he passed away on May 7 of that year. The ministry and work of Walther are in a way framed by these two incidents. Walther’s ordination anticipated and prefigured many of the characteristic issues of his life. Ordination itself stands for the issue of church and ministry, which would be Walther’s focus for the next decades. The verses from the first chapter of the book of the prophet Jeremiah also point to the Word of God that is to be proclaimed. This also was of high importance for Walther’s life and teaching. And finally it is necessary to focus on the first words of the biblical text for the sermon he preached that day, in which the prophet Jeremiah describes how insufficient he feels to follow God’s call. It is not a mere coincidence that Walther chose this of all biblical texts. He would continue to sense his inability to fulfill God’s expectations throughout the next fifty years.

* In honor of my dear colleague Gilberto da Silva on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday 1 There are basically two major biographies on C.F.W. Walther: Martin Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther. Lebensbild (St. Louis: Lutherischer Concordia-Verlag, 1890), which also provides a lot of primary sources, and August R. Suelflow, Servant of the Word. The Life and Ministry of C.F. W. Walther (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2000). – Cf. also my own biographical sketch in Christoph Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers im Kontext deutscher Auswanderergemeinden in den USA. Hintergründe – Analysen – Perspektiven (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovacˇ, 2003), 67–115.

214

Christoph Barnbrock

Walther’s Life C.F.W. Walther’s character was shaped by the fact that he was born on October 25, 1811, as the youngest son in his family and the second youngest child of those who survived childhood at all.2 It is well known that the youngest children of a family often grow up under the impression that the older siblings are way more intelligent or more competent and that it seems almost impossible to catch up to them. But, on the other hand, many of those who are among the last to be born in a family have a strong motivation to try hard to achieve great results.3 The pressures that Walther likely experienced were probably intensified by the fact that his father, also a pastor, was so rigorous in his own education that his children hardly dared to look into his eyes.4 Walther’s fear to fail becomes most obvious in some lines from his diary (Feb 8, 1829): This is exactly what makes my soul depressed, that I know, even though my knowledge is still very superficial in every aspect; nevertheless my father reminds me, yes, my teachers and especially also my fellow students, that I do have the knowledge, yes, even more that I am a promising student. I am very much afraid of the moment when that error will be discovered. I am miserable and without any limits or parameters to hang onto.5

It can be easily shown that this was not just a transient self-perception, typical for an adolescent. The degree to which he was clear and direct in his theological teaching in the later years seemed to match the degree to which he was inwardly insecure. There are many documents that show his fears about preaching appropriately, about being well prepared for presentations, and about reacting adequately to matters in the letters of others.6 It is impossible to understand Walther if one does not recognize the “peculiar mixture of softness and firmness” in his demeanor, as one of his contemporaries put it.7 Not only was he concerned to arrive at correct theological positions, but he did so in the context of various afflictions that troubled his life.8 After graduating from a local Gymnasium Walther enrolled at the University of Leipzig in order to study theology. His older brother, Otto Hermann, seems to 2 For a table of all siblings, see Suelflow, Servant of the Word, 12–13. 3 See Jürg Frick, Ich mag dich – du nervst mich! Geschwister und ihre Bedeutung für das Leben, 3rd ed. (Bern: Verlag Hans Huber, 2009), 65–73. 4 See Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 3. 5 Quoted in Suelflow, Servant of the Word, 21. 6 For examples, see Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 21, 25, 129–132, 134–137, especially 136, 161– 164, 171, 177, 202, 217, 221–223. 7 Quoted in Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 195 (my own translation). 8 See Christoph Barnbrock, “C.F.W. Walther and Affliction,” in C.F.W. Walther. Churchman and Theologian (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2011), 3–23.

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

215

have been of vital importance for this decision. The younger brother followed in his older brother’s footsteps. Otto was also the one who had introduced his younger brother to a rather pietistically-minded student group.9 This was a crucial event in Walther’s life, since now his general feeling of insufficiency assumed a new, spiritual, dimension. Walther was deeply afflicted by the question of whether he had experienced repentance to a sufficient degree. The person who most helped him with this problem was Martin Stephan, pastor in Dresden, who would in later years lead the emigration group to the United States. With Stephan’s help Walther was able to overcome his spiritual afflictions. When Walther served as pastor in the congregation of Bräunsdorf, he faced quite a few challenges. First of all he felt pretty uncomfortable with the agenda,10 the hymnal11 and the school books12 which were used in the kingdom of Saxony.13 All of these books had been deeply influenced by the spirit of Rationalism, which focused on human virtues and on Christ as the moral teacher of humankind. Issues like sin and redemption were de-emphasized and even undermined in these publications. Second, there were also personal conflicts (partly linked to theological issues) between Walther and his parish members, which also led to conflicts with the church authorities.14 One should keep this in mind when one considers how Walther later on would underline the authority of the single congregation to manage its own affairs. There were several different motives that led Walther (less than two years after his ordination and installation) and many others to join Martin Stephan in immigrating to the United States.15 These included accusations against Stephan, the shining light of these circles, conflicts in their own congregations that persuaded them that the Lutheran Church would not be able to exist in Saxony any longer, and the general appeal of the New World as well.16 As time wore on, 9 See Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 6–13. 10 Probably Kirchenbuch fuer den evangelischen Gottesdienst der Koeniglich Saechsischen Lande auf allerhoechsten Befehl herausgegeben. Erster Theil und Zweiter Theil (Dresden: Koenigliche Hofbuchdruckerey 1812). 11 Probably Dresdnisches Gesangbuch auf hoechsten Befehl herausgegeben. Mit koenigl. Saechs. allergnaedigsten Privilegio (Dresden: Hofbuchdruckerey, 1816). 12 Probably Carl Friedrich Hempel, Der kleine Schulfreund, ein Lesebuch fuer Anfaenger im Lesen und Denken, zur Vorbereitung auf den Volksschulenfreund und aehnliche Buecher. Vierzehnte unveraenderte Auflage (Leipzig: Friedrich Christian Duerr, 1837) and/or Carl Friedrich Hempel, Volksschulenfreund, ein Huelfsbuch zum Lesen, Denken und Lernen. Fuenfte verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage (Leipzig: Friedrich Christian Duerr, 1819). 13 See Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 28–32. 14 See Suelflow, Servant of the Word, 34–37. 15 For more information to the emigration process see the exhaustive study of Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi. The Settlement of the Saxon Lutherans in Missouri 1839–1841 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953). 16 See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, 53–55 and 71–72.

216

Christoph Barnbrock

the more it became obvious that Stephan had the idea of establishing an episcopal hierarchy for the Lutheran Church overseas, which was to be built under his leadership. He himself was installed as bishop on the passage overseas. But soon after they had arrived, a whole new set of problems arose (culminating in accusations of sexual harassment against Stephan), which led the group to split off from him, but this then created a major spiritual crisis, especially among the clergy. In the wake of the Stephan crisis, many began to doubt that leaving Germany had been the right thing to do: was the immigrant group a “church” in any distinct way? Had the pastors lost their call or even their eligibility? 17 It was Walther who was able to contribute significantly to settling this crisis by laying the foundation of a renewed understanding of the church (and its ministry), which he did decisively in the Altenburg Debate in April 1841.18 There he set forth arguments which had been partly taken from laypeople, who had been earlier engaged in the discussions of the problem. It is striking that this debate took place a couple of weeks after Otto Hermann, Walther’s brother, had died. It is only then that the young Walther stepped out of the shadow of his older brother and became (to the end of his life) the leader of the Saxon immigrants and The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which was founded a couple of years later (at that time: The German Evangelical-Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States). There were two more (intertwined) disputes that forced Walther to shape his doctrine of the church. The one was with Johannes Andreas August Grabau, who had emigrated from Prussia and established a Lutheran Synod with a strong emphasis on the authority of the clergy.19 The other was with Wilhelm Löhe from Neuendettelsau, who was very much engaged in assisting the North American Lutherans by providing them support in different ways. A group of his church workers co-founded The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, together with the Saxon group. He tried to mediate between the Saxon and the Prussian emigrants, but laid more emphasis on the office of the ministry vis-à-vis the congregation rather than viewing it as more a part of the congregation.20 17 See Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 36–40. 18 For the whole process from the Altenburg Debate to the first constitution of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, see Christoph Barnbrock, “Constitution in Context: Analytical Observations on the First Draft of the Missouri Synod’s Constitution (1846),” Concordia Journal 27 (2001): 38–56. 19 See William Schumacher, “Grabau’s Hirtenbrief and the Saxon Reply & Introduction to Grabau’s Hirtenbrief and the Saxon Reply,” in Soli Deo Gloria. Essays on C.F.W. Walther. In Memory of August R. Suelflow, ed. Thomas Manteufel and Robert Kolb (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2000), 133–140 (an English translation of the Hirtenbrief and the reply is printed on pages 141–176). 20 For both intertwined conflicts, see Johannes Hund, “‘Gewisse Einseitigkeiten’ und die ‘rechte,

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

217

Given everything Walther and his fellows had experienced with the church government in Saxony and with a strong leader as Stephan had been, it is no surprise that they rejected especially Grabau’s viewpoints. His approach to church and ministry would have fundamentally questioned the solution that the Saxon immigrants had just found for their spiritual and ecclesiological crisis. While it was not that distressing for the Saxon group to walk on a different path from Grabau, with whom they had not been in close contact, the conflict and later split between Löhe and the young Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod was much more painful.21 Hermann Sasse once called this one of the “most shocking events in the history of the Lutheran Church of the 19th century.”22 How valuable this cooperation with Löhe has been for the Missouri Synod can be seen by the fact that the Synod sent its two leading theologians, Walther and the then president of the Missouri Synod, Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken, to Germany in 1851 to talk with Löhe.23 Speaking face to face they were able to find agreement. But soon after the two American theologians got back home it became obvious that this agreement was not durable enough to overcome the conflicts which arose on the American continent between the different Lutheran groups. Walther served as president of the Synod in 1847–1850 and 1864–1878. Starting in 1850 he taught at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, a position he held almost until his death in 1887. But he also continued being a pastor of the St. Louis Gesammtgemeinde. Due to the many articles, books, essays and letters he wrote24 he became one of the most influential theologians of nineteenth-century Lutheranism in the United States. He has had an impact on the theological profile of his church to the present day. Even though Walther is well known for his firm confessional stance, one ought not ignore the fact that it has been Walther who was very much engaged in binding together the different Lutheran church bodies in the United States. Es-

21 22

23 24

allseitige, öcumenische Faßung’: Die Zusammenarbeit und der Bruch zwischen Wilhelm Löhe und Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther,” Lutherische Theologische und Kirche 35 (2011): 211– 245. For the different approaches inside the Missouri Synod, see Christoph Barnbrock, “Ungleiche Partner. F.C.D. Wyneken (1810–1876) and C.F.W. Walther (1811–1887) in ihrer Eigenart,” Lutherische Theologie und Kirche 35 (2011): 246–274. Hermann Sasse, “Zur Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Amt und Gemeinde (Briefe an lutherische Pastoren, Nr. 8, Juli 1949),” in In Statu Confessionis 1. Gesammelte Aufsätze von Hermann Sasse, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf (Berlin und Schleswig-Holstein: Verlag Die Spur GmbH & Co. Christliche Buchhandels KG, 1975), 121–130, 121 (my own translation). See “The Trip Report of the Visit of Walther and Wyneken to Germany in 1851,” trans. Deaconess Rachel Mumme, in At Home in the House of my Fathers, ed. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 19–106. An overview is presented by Thomas Egger and Concordia Historical Institute, “Waltherana Research Guide,” in C.F.W. Walther: Churchman and Theologian, 113–195.

218

Christoph Barnbrock

pecially worth mentioning are the Free Conferences (1856–59), different colloquies in which he participated, and the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference (which began in 1872).25 It is obviously not true that Walther “wanted to see neighbors only in the brothers and sisters of his own Synod.”26 In point of fact, Walther actually had to defend himself for inviting individuals to the Free Conferences who only accepted the Unaltered Augsburg Confession and not the whole Book of Concord.27 Striving for the truth and communicating with those with whom a consensus not (yet) had been reached was no contradiction in Walther’s thought. When Walther passed away in the spring of 1887, his Synod and the Seminary he had served for so long had experienced an incredible growth. And yet throughout his lifetime he had been burdened by his perceived inabilities, a perception that remained a faithful companion to him: suffering from his “very small, extremely limited knowledge”28 and feeling “as if I were not a worker but a stumbling stone in His vineyard, which He must finally cast aside.”29 This is one of the reasons why Walther stuck so often to the writings of the Lutheran fathers, especially to Luther himself. In his last essay he stated: A man ought to make it a rule of himself to read something in Luther’s writings every day. He should especially flee to them when he needs to be refreshed for his work, is tired, forsaken, discouraged, in need of counsel, and feels miserable. He should especially read the letters, for they cheer, strengthen, and revive. One should make himself so familiar with his edition of Luther that he can find every document without timeconsuming reference works.30

25 See Suelflow, Servant of the Word, 195–210. 26 Angelika Dörfler-Dierken, Luthertum und Demokratie. Deutsche und amerikanische Theologen des 19. Jahrhunderts zu Staat, Gesellschaft und Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 357 (my own translation). 27 See C.F.W. Walther, “Subscribing to the Whole Book of Concord. Foreword to the 1857 Volume. Lehre und Wehre 3, No. 1, Jan 1857, pp. 1–4,” in C.F.W. Walther, Church Fellowship (Walther’s Works) (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2015), 1–4. 28 C.F.W. Walther, “Brief an die Ehrwürdige Pastoralconferenz zu Chicago, Herrn Pastor H. Wunder daselbst zu handen (9. März 1878),” in Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 134–137, 136 (my own translation). 29 C.F.W. Walther, “Walther’s Breakdown. To the German Evangelical Lutheran Gesamtgemeinde of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in St. Louis 1860,” in At Home in the House of my Fathers, 142–145, 143. 30 C.F.W. Walther, “A Fruitful Reading of the Writings of Luther. A Paper by Dr. C.F.W. Walther. Taken from the Proceedings of the Missouri District Conference. Offered for Publication at the Conclusion of the Same 1887,” in At Home in the House of my Fathers, 333–343, 343.

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

219

The Word of God and the Lutheran Tradition If one takes a closer look at Walther’s larger works, for example his book, The Voice of Our Church on the Question of Church and Office,31 one may be surprised by the number of quotations from Holy Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and the writings of Lutheran theologians that he provided and by the small number of his own words. This is one reason why Walther has been accused of being a (mere) repristination theologian.32 But why did Walther work like this? Were his own abilities indeed that limited that he was unable to develop a more complex thinking on his own? Was he searching too intensely for certainty by getting back to the fathers in faith, as his older brother Otto Hermann had observed when, after Stephan’s dismissal and during the resulting crisis, he wrote to his younger brother: Your excerpts on vocation don’t help you at all, if you are not assuring yourself regarding your vocation to His eternal kingdom of mercy. In it everything is right and at once everything crooked is straight.33

But even if one would take these aspects as illustrative, they do not explain why Walther was offered an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Göttingen in connection with his book, The Voice of Our Church on the Question of Church and Office.34 It is hard for us to understand, in a time of nearly unlimited research options, that for Walther and his contemporaries the (orthodox) Lutheran literature was not that readily accessible. This was true for the German context in which Pietism and Rationalism had outpaced that older way of doing theology. And even more so was it true for the American context, in which this literature was hardly available at all. Walther’s compilation of quotations thus should not be understood as mere repetition of what everybody was already aware of; rather, he provided theologians of that day with a real rediscovery of hidden treasures and did so through remarkable editorial work. Moreover, each selection of the quotations in a different historical setting has to be understood as

31 C.F.W. Walther, The Church & The Office of The Ministry, 3rd ed (1875), trans. J.T. Mueller, ed. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2012). 32 See his diary entry, quoted in Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 106–107: “Let us bear the humiliation with joy, that we only repristinate the theology of the 16th century, not reproduce; let us look to those, who seek fame having not received the pure Lutheran teaching as students, but having independently reproduced.” (My own translation). 33 Otto Hermann Walther, “Brief an C.F.W. Walther (9. November 1840),” in Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 42–43, 43 (my own translation). 34 See Gottfried Hoffmann, “C.F.W. Walthers Göttinger Ehrendoktorat,” in Einträchtig lehren (Festschrift Jobst Schöne), ed. Jürgen Diestelmann/Wolfgang Schillhahn (Groß Oesingen: Verlag der Lutherischen Buchhandlung Heinrich Harms, 1997), 167–198.

220

Christoph Barnbrock

an act of interpretation. An old word, spoken in a new context, will necessarily create a new (though not necessarily different) message. And it is no surprise that Walther turned back to the confessional writings and to the private teachings of Lutheran theologians. Different from Pietistic, Rationalistic and hierarchical theological approaches, his way of doing theology led him to know the books of those Lutheran theologians who focused less on human abilities. The perspective of the extra nos, that salvation is completely God’s work, was a beneficial contrast to the teaching in the theologies of his time, which forced the single person to believe more deeply, to become a better person, or to do what a religious leader was asking one to do. Lutheran theology thus has been shown in Walther’s life to be useful for overcoming personal and ecclesiological crisis situations. Although Walther adhered to the teaching of verbal inspiration35 and emphasized the authority of the Holy Scripture and that of the Lutheran Confessions36 he gives the de facto impression that for him the confessional writings served as normative frame for interpreting the Scriptures.37 In a letter Wilhelm Löhe defined the disagreement with Walther this way: Furthermore, the question is not what Luther, the theologians, and the Symbols say, rather what do the Scriptures say? Is it from the Scriptures that my doubts arise, and not only mine, regarding the individual-Lutheran doctrine? While Walther and Wyneken were here, an article appeared in Der Lutheraner that censured not merely us poor pastors but also the Erlangen theologians, because we do not first listen to Lutheran doctrine and then the Scriptures.38

But even if in Walther’s theology the Holy Scripture and its interpretation in the Lutheran Confessions tend to merge, there are some basic thoughts which also have to be considered. First of all: Walther explicitly accepts the possibility that the Symbols of the Lutheran Church could contain errors:39 But is it not possible that the Symbols of the orthodox Church contain errors in less important points? Yes, but the possibility does not establish reality. […] But if error should really be found in our Symbols, we would be the first to pass the death sentence on them.40 35 C.F.W. Walther, “Vier Thesen über das Schriftprinzip,” Lehre und Wehre 13 (1867): 97–111, 100–103. 36 C.F.W. Walther, “The Only Source of Doctrine. Foreword to the 1882 Volume. Lehre und Wehre 27, No. 1, Jan 1882, pp. 1–6, Lehre und Wehre 28, No. 2 Feb. 1882, pp. 49–57, Lehre und Wehre 28, No. 3, March 1882, pp. 97–108,” in Walther, Church Fellowship, 337–349. 37 See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W.W. Walthers, 106–108, 127–130, 295–297, 363–364. 38 “Löhe’s Response to Walther’s Doctrine of the Office of the Ministry and the Walther/Wyneken Visit. Letter to Grossmann, 1853,” in Walther, The Church & The Office of The Ministry, 439–446, 442. 39 Against my earlier observations in Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, 106 and 297. 40 C.F.W. Walther, “Answer to the Question.” “Why Should Our Pastors, Teachers, and Pro-

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

221

The second aspect that has to be taken into consideration is the distinction between “inside the confessional church body” and “outside this church body.” Since most of Walther’s discussion partners were from within the Lutheran Church, this “inside the church”-perspective dominated his thinking. It is the free decision of every single person to subscribe to the Symbolical books of the Lutheran Church or not, but if he does so, his decision should be taken seriously, that he “understands and believes that they [i. e. the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church, ed.] do agree with Scripture.”41 For the debate with discussion partners from other denominations the reference only to the Holy Scripture would be (of course) much more important. But what is the benefit of such a strong emphasis on the Confessions and the unconditional subscription to them? I would like to name only two aspects. First of all it is an act of fairness towards the congregations that they get what they justifiably expect – or, to say it in Walther’s words: It should be “a guarantee that no teacher with an erring conscience nor an outspoken errorist will come in and teach them all sorts of errors.”42 A second aspect would be that in this way not all questions have to be discussed over and over again: Finally, the purpose of binding the teachers of the Church to its public Confessions is to remove the long controversies that have been thoroughly discussed and settled, at least in the orthodox Church. A mere conditional subscription, however, opens the door for a renewal of controversies that have already been settled and paves the way for everlasting discord.43

Walther was here presenting an approach to the hermeneutics of the Lutheran Confessions and the right understanding of the binding character of the Symbolical Books.44 But he refuses to accept any approaches of a conditional subscription to the Symbols, for instance by treating some issues as “open questions.”45 For Walther, the latter approach would create a problem in that private opinions would then replace the authority of the teaching of the church: If the Church therefore would permit its teachers to interpret the Symbols according to the Scriptures, and not the Scriptures according to its Symbols, the subscription would be no guarantee that the respective teacher understands and interprets Scripture as the Church does. It would only tell the Church what he himself holds for correct. Thus each

41 42 43 44 45

fessors Subscribe Unconditionally to the Symbolical Writings of Our Church? Essay Delivered at the Western District Convention in 1858,” in Walther, Church Fellowship, 11–28, 22. Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 19. Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 18–19. Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 19. See Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 11–13. See Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 15–17.

222

Christoph Barnbrock

personal conviction of its teachers of that moment would become the Symbol to which they are sworn.46

Actually Walther took seriously the fact that every act of reading the Scriptures is an act of interpretation, in which there is the danger that one will insert one’s own personal views. Walther tried to overcome this problem by placing an emphasis on a larger consensus that is not just focused on a single person and his interpretation but includes the interpretation of various theologians of the church and which has been adopted by countless numbers of theologians and laypeople. Probably because of his own sensibility about his own limitations, Walther preferred to stick with the consensus of the church rather than opening up room for private opinions of each and every theologian at that time.

Church and the Office of the Ministry47 As described above Walther developed his understanding of the relationship of church and the office of the ministry during the months after Stephan’s dismissal. In the light of the awareness that they may have emigrated under the wrong conditions, Walther and his fellow Saxons had to deal with the questions about whether or not the immigrant group could be considered “church,” whether or not their congregations had the power to call pastors, and whether or not they should just return to Germany. In the Altenburg Debate Walther distinguished different ways of using the word, “church,” especially in the distinction between the visible and invisible church. Most important in the historical situation was the fact that even heterodox groups can be called church: VI. 3. Even heterodox groups have church authority; even among them the goods of the church may be validly administered, the preaching office [Predigtamt] established, the sacraments validly administered, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven exercised. VII. 4. Even heterodox groups are not to be dissolved, but reformed.48

This approach, which emphasized the invisibility of the church and focused on each individual Christian group, laid the foundation of what would later become The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Since the Missouri Synod was formed in 1847 by pastors and congregations with different backgrounds, it was necessary to explain how the individual 46 Walther, “Answer to the Question,” 19. 47 See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, 73–77, 88–96, 101–105. 48 C.F.W. Walther, “Altenburg Theses.” trans. Carl S. Meyer and Matthew C. Harrison, in Walther, The Church & The Office of the Ministry, 362.

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

223

congregation and its pastor are related to each other. John C. Wohlrabe, Jr. called Walther’s perspective “A Distinctly Mediating Position.”49 This becomes evident by two poles in the second part of Walther’s book, The Voice of Our Church on the Question of Church and Office. On the one hand he stated: Thesis II The preaching office or the pastoral office is not a human institution but an office that God Himself has established. Thesis III The preaching office is not an optional office but one whose establishment has been commanded to the church and to which the church is properly bound till the end of time.50

On the other hand he affirmed: Thesis VI The preaching office is conferred by God through the congregation as the possessor of all ecclesiastical authority, or the keys, and through the call that is prescribed by God. The ordination of those who are called with the laying on of hands is not a divine institution but an apostolic, churchly order and only a solemn public confirmation of the call. Thesis VII The holy preaching office is the authority, conferred by God through the congregation as the possessor of the priesthood and of all churchly authority, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in public office on behalf of the congregation.51

Walther considered both, office and congregation, like an ellipse with two focal points. There is not just the preaching office vis-à-vis the congregation, and there is not only the congregation delegating its authority to a minister. But the one is actually related to the other and vice versa – though in different ways. The results of Walther’s thoughts are: Thesis IX To the preaching office there is due respect as well as unconditional obedience when the preacher uses God’s Word. Yet the preacher has no dominion in the church. Therefore, he has no right to introduce new laws or arbitrarily to establish adiaphora or ceremonies in the church. The preacher has no right to inflict and carry out excommunication alone, without the preceding knowledge of the whole congregation.

49 John C. Wohlrabe, Jr., “Walther’s Doctrine of the Ministry: A Distinctly Mediating Position,” in Sola Deo Gloria, 203–221. 50 Walther, The Church & The Office of The Ministry, 5. 51 Walther, The Church & The Office of The Ministry, 5.

224

Christoph Barnbrock

Thesis X To the preaching office, according to divine right, belongs also the office to judge doctrine, but laymen also possess this right. Therefore, in the ecclesiastical courts and councils they are accorded both a seat and vote together with the preachers.52

On the one hand, the last thesis especially reflects the contribution of the laymen during the ecclesiological crisis in the run-up to the Altenburg Debate. Walther had said in these days: Read everything to the above mentioned men and ask them in my name, also to put their hands to the task and to help; if the laymen don’t contribute we are truly lost; I regard us pastors really as the most miserable ones […].53

On the other hand, Walther refused to endorse a practice of congregations to allow laymen to preach on a regular basis: This is absolutely and directly contrary to the doctrine of the Scriptures regarding the office [Amt] (1 Corinthians 12:29; Acts 6:4; Titus 1:5). And it is contrary to the Fourteenth Article of the Augsburg Confession. It is against all the testimony of pure teachers and against the constant practice of our church. Given all this, it is inconceivable how a person otherwise well versed in God’s Word and the orthodox church can for an instant be unclear on this. To base [this practice] upon the spiritual priesthood of Christians is ridiculous [Unsinn].54

Taking into consideration that Walther focused in his Altenburg Theses so much on the invisible or even the invisibility of the true church it is eye-catching that Walther identifies about 25 years later the Lutheran Church with the “True Visible Church of God Upon Earth.”55 The original title of the book, The Evangelical Lutheran Church, The True Visible Church of God Upon Earth can easily become an occasion for misunderstanding, by identifying the Lutheran Church with the true church at all. Probably also for that reason the English translation uses a short title: The True Visible Church. Walther explicitly rejected the idea that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church:

52 Walther, The Church & The Office of The Ministry, 6. 53 Quoted in Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 39 (my own translation). – In Saxony laymen seemed to be astonishingly dedicated to getting involved in theological matters. It is no coincidence that for establishing the Lutheran Free Church in Saxony in the second half of the nineteenth century so called “Lutheranervereine” have been of greater importance. See Gottfried Herrmann, Lutherische Freikirche in Sachsen. Geschichte und Gegenwart einer lutherischen Bekenntniskirche (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1985), 56–74. 54 C.F.W. Walther, “On Luther and Lay Preachers. A Letter to Pastor J.A. Ottesen, 1858,” trans. Matthew C. Harrison, in At Home in the House of my Fathers, 137–141, 140. 55 C.F.W. Walther, The True Visible Church: An Essay of the Convention of the General Evangelical Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States for its Sessions at St. Louis, Mo., October 31, 1866, trans. John Theodore Mueller (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1961).

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

225

Thesis XI The Evangelical Lutheran Church is not that one holy Christian church outside of which there is no salvation, although it has never separated itself from it and professes no other.56

The emphasis in the title of this book obviously has to be laid on “visible” and not on “true.” In any case, Walther focused at that time much more on the visible churches than he had done two decades prior. In the later context he identified different types of ecclesiastic groups, “churches”, “heretical groups”, “sects (schisms) or separatistic bodies” and finally “synagogues of Satan and temples of idols.”57 While this new accent was still compatible with his earlier writings, it can be understood as a shift in stress. In the first years Walther and his fellows had to define how they themselves could be understood as “church.” Decades later these theologians and congregations had become for a long time part of an established church and had to think about how to relate to other church bodies. It was especially important for them to take into account the attractiveness of the Roman Catholic Church and its theology. Two of Walther’s faculty colleagues had joined the Roman Catholic Church in the years after the publication of The True Visible Church.58 Quite likely in the years leading up to their decision, there had been discussions within the faculty about the issue of the importance of the visibility of the church as it is underlined in Roman Catholic theology. On the other hand, sticking to the concept of the one true visible church was important for Walther in order to reject a specific concept of ecumenism in which all churches are thought to be complementary in their teachings: Does the saving doctrine in all visible churches still flow from a murky fountain even after the Reformation? Is each one only one color of the rainbow so that only by putting them all together does the heavenly rainbow of pure and complete truth become visible on earth? Does none have the complete pure teaching? […]As we have seen above from Gerhard, our fathers of three hundred and two hundred years ago sincerely believed that, after the revelation of Antichrist, God truly gave grace for the presentation of such a visible church – and they praised God for it with cheerful voices.59

If there would be no true visible church all visible churches would have their relative truths. But if there is a true visible church, one can affirm this church’s teachings as presenting the truth, though without overlooking that such a church never will be perfect. Walther was thereby criticizing the concept of denomi-

56 57 58 59

Walther, The True Visible Church, 45. Walther, The True Visible Church, 15, 20, 29, 32. See Suelflow, Servant of the Word, 105. C.F.W. Walther, “On Doctrinal Development. Foreword to the 1859 Volume. Lehre und Wehre 5, No. 1, Jan 1859, pp 1–12, Vol 5, No. 2, Febr. 1859, pp. 33–45,” in Walther, Church Fellowship, 29–41, 33.

226

Christoph Barnbrock

nationalism, which became especially important after his lifetime in the twentieth century.

The Preacher60 and the Teacher of (future) Pastors Although Walther is remembered today primarily as a systematic theologian, he probably had the strongest effect on his church by being a preacher and teaching future pastors in his synod. Walther preached on a regular basis until he accepted the call to serve as professor. Even then he was assigned to preach at least thirteen times a year in the St. Louis congregations.61 Of course he also preached in other places and on other occasions, when he served as president of the Missouri Synod. His sermons have been printed in various ways and have been bestsellers.62 For example, 22,000 copies of his Gospel Postil sold within eleven years. During that time it was also translated into Norwegian.63 Obviously Walther found the right words for his contemporaries, even though he himself felt insufficient in this area, too: You cannot imagine how miserably I have to beg from the loving God each period and I feel ashamed to tell you how much precious time I have to spend like a schoolboy to memorize …; You start joyfully to write your sermons; I mostly with mortal fear, believe me.64

One can interpret Walther’s statement here as an expression of “his well-known humbleness,” as Günther puts it.65 Or one could take his words more seriously and concede that preaching was a more difficult issue for him than other parts of his professional activity. And indeed there are several aspects in his sermons— such as his focus on the emotions of the listeners or his attempt to present the Christian faith as something absolutely reasonable or his description of missing 60 See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, particularly 131–412; and Christoph Barnbrock, “Introduction,“ in C.F.W. Walther, Gospel Sermons, vol. 1, trans. Donald E. Heck (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2013), xiii–xviii. 61 See Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 80–81. 62 All known sermons of C.F.W. Walther (published and not yet published) are listed in Thomas Egger, Walther Sermon Inventory: An Exhaustive Listing and Finding Aid for the Sermons and Addresses of Dr. C.F.W. Walther (St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute, 1998). On the occasion of Walther’s 200th birthday another volume of previously unpublished sermons was released: C.F.W. Walther, Frühregen und Spätregen. Predigten, ed. Christoph Barnbrock (Groß Oesingen: Verlag der Lutherischen Buchhandlung Heinrich Harms, 2011). 63 See. C.F.W. Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Epistel Postille. Predigten über die meisten epistolischen Perikopen des Kirchenjahrs u. freie Texte (St. Louis: Lutherischer Concordia Verlag, 1882), III. 64 Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 163 (my own translation). 65 Günther, Dr. C.F.W. Walther, 163 (my own translation).

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

227

faith as a psychiatric disorder—that seem to be problematic.66 Sometimes in his sermons Walther fell short of his own standards that he described in his later works, especially his lectures on Law and Gospel.67 Nevertheless, Walther’s homiletical work is impressive. Different approaches can be identified in his sermons: to describe reality in the light of God’s Word and to present and to represent aspects of this God-shaped truth; to convince the listeners on a logical basis; to provide assistance on how to act in the new context; to give the listeners a correct orientation in a multi-confessional world, something that had not been necessary to do in Germany; to lead the listeners to overcome situations of spiritual danger, hardships, and despair.68 Coming to church was like coming home for many of the parishioners, who came as immigrants to the United States. They listened to the gospel in their mother tongue—and the gospel was proclaimed in the sermon according to the Lutheran Confessions as they had been used to (more or less) in their home countries. Walther put it like this: “The gospel … brings to you heaven on earth [and] it makes this foreign country for you to a new home country.”69 Even though Walther did not seem to be a very situational theologian, especially in his works on pastoral theology and in his sermons he was well aware of the fact that he was teaching and preaching in a specific national and social context. His pastoral theology is called American-Lutheran Pastoral Theology,70 and his most important sermon volumes are likewise called American-Lutheran Gospel Postil71 and American-Lutheran Epistle Postil.72 As in his other publications, so also in his Pastoral Theology Walther referred broadly to the writings of orthodox Lutheran theologians. Much more than elsewhere, however, he related those insights to his own American context, which was to some extent different from the circumstances he had faced earlier.73 Starting with the topic of the call into the ministry and ending with the matter of resigning from one’s position, Walther discussed pretty much all issues of a pastor’s work in that time. That his considerations gained importance beyond the North American context may be shown by the fact that parts of his Pastoral 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, 360–366. See Barnbrock, Die Predigten C.F.W. Walthers, 357–360. See Barnbrock, “Introduction,” xvi. C.F.W. Walther, “Kirchweihpredigt” [1847], in C.F.W. Walther, Casual=Predigten und =Reden. Aus seinem schriftlichen Nachlaß gesammelt (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1892), 197–207, 205 (my own translation). C.F.W. Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Pastoraltheologie, 5th ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1906 [1872]). C.F.W. Walther, Amerikanisch=Lutherische Evangelien Postille. Predigten über die evangelischen Pericopen des Kirchenjahrs (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1870/71). Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Epistel Postille. For example, see Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Pastoraltheologie, 37 and 342.

228

Christoph Barnbrock

Theology have been reprinted in Germany (even as recently as 1986) in a collection of excerpts from works of pastoral theology.74 It is quite astonishing that Walther prized highly what he called a “biblical psychological” approach.75 He was not satisfied with sermons that are merely free of heresy, he also criticized sermons that had little or no effect on the listeners. In his view, sermons should lead the hearers to a “resolution.”76 He did not elaborate on what he meant by the psychological aspect within his “biblical psychological” approach, but one may assume that his main emphasis concerned a spiritual understanding, since he stressed that this only can be “learned through lived experience in Christianity and it has to be asked for every time.”77 Still, Walther did not take the appropriate effect of a sermon for granted, as if that effect could occur merely through a presentation of orthodox theology; rather, he continually asked how sermons can be “effective.” In light of their historical importance, Walther’s evening lectures on The Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel (1884/85), which were published posthumously (1897), are some of the greatest parts of his work.78 Even today his theses are used in educational programs worldwide.79 In these lectures, held at the end of his lifetime, Walther definitely reached the final maturity of his theological thought. At the same time one discovers extraordinarily personal passages in this book. In these lectures Walther rediscovered the basic distinction between law and gospel, which had been of such great importance for Martin Luther. But as with so many other issues, this one, too, had fallen into oblivion. Eberhard Hauschildt described the development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the “dissolution” of law and gospel as a “homiletical category.”80 Walther was one of the first, if not the first Lutheran theologian, who brought this topic back to light. The base line of Walther’s explanations is that human beings cannot contribute anything to their salvation (neither beforehand nor afterwards) and that 74 Detlef Lehmann, ed., Vom Dienst des Pfarrers. Auszüge aus den klassischen lutherischen Pastoraltheologien des 19. Jahrhunderts (Oberurseler Hefte. Ergänzungsband 1) (Oberursel, 1986). 75 Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Pastoraltheologie, 109 (my own translation). 76 Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Pastoraltheologie, 109 (my own translation). 77 Walther, Americanisch=Lutherische Pastoraltheologie, 109 (my own translation). 78 C.F.W. Walther, Law & Gospel. How to Read and Apply the Bible, ed. Charles P. Schaum et al., trans. Christian C. Tiews (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2010). 79 For example, see John T. Pless, Handling the Word of Truth: Law and Gospel in the Church Today (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2004) and its expanded German translation, John T. Pless, Unterscheidungskunst, ed. and trans. Christoph Barnbrock (Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht, 2014). 80 Eberhard Hauschildt, “‘Gesetz und Evangelium’ – eine homiletische Kategorie?. Überlegungen zur wechselvollen Geschichte eines lutherischen Schemas in der Predigtlehre,” Pastoraltheologie 80 (1991): 262–287, 264 (my own translation).

Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887)

229

they must and can expect everything from God. The law has to proclaim the forsakenness of humankind, and the gospel God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and comfort for Christ’s sake. The ninth thesis has to be regarded as the “central thesis of the series”:81 Thesis IX You are not rightly distinguishing law and gospel in the Word of God if you point sinners who have been struck down and terrified by the law toward their own prayers and struggles with God and tell them that they have to work their way into a state of grace. That is, do not tell them to keep on praying and struggling until they would feel that God has received them into grace. Rather, point them toward the Word and the sacraments.82

In his explanation Walther very frankly referred to his own experiences from his student days, when he underwent “a period of severest spiritual affliction.”83 That he still got back to that about fifty years later is an indication of how those situations in which he felt insufficient had had a great, lasting impact on his theological thoughts throughout his whole lifetime. Particularly the pietistic theology with which he had become acquainted in his youth and which he found again in a similar way in North American Methodism was something he sought to overcome in his theology and especially in his theses on law and gospel. Finally with the distinction between law and gospel Walther had found the matching answer for the various afflictions of his life: Now, whoever receives Him and believes in Him, that is, whoever takes comfort in the fact that, for the sake of His Son, God will be merciful to them, will forgive their sins, and grant them eternal salvation, etc. – whoever is engaged in this preaching of the pure gospel and thus directs people to Christ, the only mediator between God and people, he, as a preacher, is doing the will of God. That is the genuine fruit by which no one is deceived or duped. For even if the devil himself were to preach this truth, this preaching would not be false or made up of lies – and a person believing it would have what it promises.84

Walther’s Lifetime Achievement Walther’s accomplishments are impressive, especially if one considers the extremely difficult and challenging circumstances he had faced in his lifetime. He was able to overcome his own (spiritual) crisis situations by focusing on the 81 Richard W. Kraemer, “The Structure of Walther’s Lectures on Law and Gospel,” in Soli Deo Gloria, 61–81, 67. 82 Walther, Law & Gospel, 143. 83 Walther, Law & Gospel, 157–167, 158. 84 Walther, Law & Gospel, 466.

230

Christoph Barnbrock

Lutheran message of the clear gospel. He rediscovered the treasure of orthodox Lutheran theology and did his best to present it to his contemporaries and to relate it to his time and general conditions. His heritage bears fruits to this day. In this way he laid the foundation of a confessional type of Lutheranism and of such a Lutheran Church in the United States. It is a Reformed theologian who has probably best described the importance of Walther for nineteenth-century American theology: A recovery of classical Reformation theology could have been very helpful at this point for the development of American preaching. There were Americans who were beginning to realize this. […] On the other hand, too many American preachers knew Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Melanchthon only remotely. We can only regret that Walther and those who followed him never really penetrated the larger circles of American Christianity. How valuable Walther’s witness might have been if he had been able to speak to the American church more broadly.85

On the other hand, these words also express a pious hope: That confessional Lutherans do not pull back into their ghetto, but boldly introduce their rich heritage and their understanding of theology to the broader Christian and theological discussion. Maybe Walther was sometimes a bit too harsh in the way he led theological discussions and thus let slip the chance to be heard beyond the limits of his own denomination. F.C.D. Wyneken, the second president of the Missouri Synod, put it this way in a letter to Walther: Then I am, as you also well know, against the form and manner in which controversy with our opponents is often carried out. For instance, according to my opinion, we deal too much with the personal circumstances, frictions etc., that arise between us and our opponents. And we demonstrate a level of irritation and touchiness, which according to my view is not fitting for us. That was the case earlier with Grabau, and now with Wisconsin, Iowa etc. It always seems to me that we could certainly drive the matter in a somewhat loftier manner, not being so petty, perhaps dealing more with the matter itself. […] I also believe that in our fight (we may and shall give up nothing of the doctrine itself), we too often forget that we could win over sincere people, or could better help those who are on the way [toward us], by proceeding in a friendly manner (which recognizes the good that shows itself developing here and there) to move them to the right point of view.86

Probably both, sticking to the orthodox Lutheran teachings, as Walther did, and “proceeding in a friendly manner,” as Wyneken suggested, will help to transmit Walther’s heritage into the twenty-first century. 85 Hughes Oliphant Old, The Modern Age, vol. 6 of The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2007), 622. 86 F.C.D. Wyneken, “Letter from Wyneken to Walther on Anfechtungen, Depression, Doctrine and Polemics, December 5, 1863,” trans. Matthew C. Harrison and Roland Ziegler, in At Home in the House of my Fathers, 423–427, 425–426.

Carl S. Hughes

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Especially in comparison to the other figures in this book, Søren Kierkegaard’s status as a “Lutheran theologian” may seem dubious. While his fame is assured, many think of him primarily as something other than a theologian: a philosopher or a literary writer or a psychologist—the “father of existentialism,” after all. Kierkegaard never called himself a theologian, and the theologians of his day were almost always the objects of his ire. He gave himself a variety of humbler titles, for example, “a poet of the religious,” “a Christian author,” and “a Christian poet and thinker.”1 Nonetheless, Kierkegaard does belong in this book as a leading light of nineteenth-century Lutheran theology. He was one of Lutheranism’s most stinging critics, yet his criticisms have deep Lutheran roots that enable him to re-envision this tradition in highly creative ways. Unlike many of the other figures in this volume, Kierkegaard’s influence upon subsequent nineteenth-century Lutheran thought was slight. His authorship operated by a kind of delayed reaction, achieving its international fame and force in the twentieth century (a phenomenon that shows no signs of abating in the twenty-first). During his lifetime, many of his most famous works sold poorly: the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” widely considered one of Kierkegaard’s masterpieces today, sold fewer than 50 copies in its first three years (CUP, xv). Kierkegaard was virtually unknown outside of Denmark during his lifetime. Yet he never doubted his future fame. He predicted in his journal that “the time will come when not only my writings but my whole life…will be studied and studied” ( JP, 5:6078). Elsewhere he exults: “Once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name for an author. Then it will [be] read, translated into foreign languages as well” ( JP, 6:6491). He goes so far as to say that his “work is of such a nature that it will not be essentially understood until after my death” ( JP, 5:6001).

1 JP, 6:6511; PV, 23; JP, 6:6205. See the end of this article for a list of abbreviations (hereafter used internally).

232

Carl S. Hughes

Reading Kierkegaard for his potential contributions to Lutheran theology thus requires a kind of double vision: attending to his life, intellectual world, and interlocutors, on the one hand, while pondering his later reception and potential to speak to new theological contexts, on the other. Because he makes the telling of his life story so integral to his writings, more attention must be paid to his biography than to that of many of the other theologians in this volume.

A Short Life on a Small Stage Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813, in Copenhagen, to a wealthy family.2 He was the youngest of seven children, although only he and his brother Peter Christian would live past the age of thirty-three. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was a dominant and imposing figure in his life, and Kierkegaard’s frequent journal entries about him attest to the fraught nature of their relationship. (Kierkegaard’s mother, in contrast, never once appears in his journal.) M.P. Kierkegaard had grown up poor in Jutland—so poor that as a hungry child tending his family’s sheep upon a windswept health, he cursed God for giving him such a miserable lot. Guilt from this experience would haunt his entire life. At the age of twelve, Michael moved to Copenhagen to work in the drygoods shop of an uncle. He eventually became one of the wealthiest men in Denmark through his work in the mercantile business and a series of canny investments.3 Kierkegaard remembers his father as a melancholic and somberly pious man, whose religiosity shaped his own in undeniable ways. Although M.P. Kierkegaard lacked formal education, he read widely in theology and philosophy and had a special fondness for the pre-Kantian metaphysician Christian Wolff.4 His childhood in Jutland was shaped by the Moravian brethren or Hernhuters, whose pietistic communities were officially tolerated at that time by the state Lutheran church.5 When Michael arrived in Copenhagen, he continued to attend Moravian 2 Biographical resources on Kierkegaard include Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Alistair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and the dated but still helpful Walter Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942). See also Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990); and Bruce H. Kirmmse, ed., Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 3 Garff, Kierkegaard, 8. 4 Garff, Kierkegaard, 13. 5 Resources on the relationship between Kierkegaard and Moravian pietism can be found in Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 28–35; and Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard,

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

233

meetings on Sunday evenings, but as he became a prominent member of the Copenhagen bourgeoisie, he also began attending services in the state church in the mornings.6 Søren Kierkegaard was brought up attending both services on a regular basis, and these two very different strands of Danish religiosity left enduring marks on his thought. He was clearly influenced by the pietist emphasis on religious feeling, personal appropriation of truth, and outward good works. At the same time, for most of his adult life, Kierkegaard attended services in the state church regularly, and he even made one of the distinctive liturgies of Danish Lutheranism, the Friday service of Holy Communion, a centerpiece of a series of twelve discourses. Kierkegaard enrolled at the University of Copenhagen in 1830 as a theology student, following the wishes of his father. Early on, however, his commitment to the discipline of theology, and to Christianity in general, seems to have been weak. His older brother Peter Christian, who went on to become a pastor and a bishop in the state church, had passed his theological examinations in three and a half years; Søren took a full ten before taking them. A devotee of the theater and the opera, Kierkegaard was immersed in aesthetic pursuits during this time. He was enamored of J. L Heiberg, a Danish playwright and man of letters, who married the leading Danish actress of the day and was also the first to introduce Hegelian philosophy into Denmark. Joakim Garff reports that during the year 1836, Kierkegaard spent more on books, clothing, restaurants, and tobacco than the average university professor earned in a year.7 In his journals and letters from this period, Kierkegaard expresses deep-seated doubts about Christianity. In a letter written in the summer of 1835 from the coastal city of Gilleleje, Kierkegaard writes of the theological examinations hanging over him with casual disdain: “As far as little annoyances are concerned, I will say only that I am starting to study for the theological examination, a pursuit that does not interest me in the least and that therefore does not get done very fast” ( JP, 5:5092). That same year, Peter Christian Kierkegaard wrote in his journal: Søren does not seem to be studying for his examinations at all now. May God help him find a good way out of all this inner ferment and to the salvation of his soul.8

During Kierkegaard’s university years, Hegelianism was a major force on the Copenhagen intellectual scene. Kierkegaard studied Hegel carefully, though he ultimately came to oppose Hegelian speculation as antithetical to true Pietism and Holiness (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), especially 35–62; and Andrew J. Burgess, “Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: “Practice in Christianity” (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004). 6 Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 259–260. 7 Garff, Kierkegaard, 102–103. 8 Quoted in Garff, Kierkegaard, 37.

234

Carl S. Hughes

Christianity.9 Hegel’s philosophy entered Denmark in the 1830s, first through the philosophy and aesthetics of J.L. Heiberg and then through the systematic theology of H.L. Martensen. Kierkegaard was especially opposed to Martensen, who was only five years his senior and was rapidly climbing the ladder of teaching positions at the University of Copenhagen. Martensen would publish his systematic theology, Christian Dogmatics, in 1849.10 In many ways Kierkegaard’s thought is inconceivable without Hegelianism as its bête noir. Kierkegaard would accuse Hegel of neglecting subjectivity and existence, making the human the measure of the divine, and overestimating the possibilities of speculative knowledge and human progress. In these polemics, Kierkegaard exalts Socrates as the polar opposite of everything wrong with Hegel. He often refers to Socrates as “that simple and wise man of ancient times” (e. g., WL, 12 and CD, 218), and he was so committed to Socrates’ exemplarity as a subjective thinker that he asserts at one point that Socrates must have become a Christian in the afterlife (PV, 54). A pair of famous journal entries from Kierkegaard’s student days mark revealing turning points in his self-understanding. The first comes from the summer of 1835 at Gilleleje, on Denmark’s northern coast. Even as he continued to express doubts about Christianity, Kierkegaard gives voice to the unshakeable orientation toward subjectivity that would characterize his future authorship: What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Of what use would it be to me to discover a so-called objective truth, to work through the philosophical systems so that I could, if asked, make critical judgments about them; … of what use would it be to me to be able to formulate the meaning of Christianity, to be able to explain many specific points—if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life? ( JP, 5:5100)

9 Accounts of Kierkegaard’s complex relationship to Hegel can be found in Jon Stewart, “Hegel: Kierkegaard’s Reading and Use of Hegel’s Primary Texts” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, ed. Jon Stewart (Aldershot, Englaand and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007); Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Merold Wetphal, “Kierkegaard and Hegel” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alistair Hannay and Gordon Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, trans. George L. Stengren (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 10 Although Martensen is known almost entirely as a foil for Kierkegaard today, his work acquired considerable international fame in the decades after its publication. Kierkegaard’s early biographer Walter Lowrie reports reading Martensen in English translation—long before a single word of Kierkegaard was translated into English. Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard, 5.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

235

Although the seeds of Kierkegaard’s lifelong focus on subjectivity are sprouting here, it is not yet clear whether Christianity will be the truth that is truth “for him.” Indeed, he expresses considerable suspicion here of academic philosophy and theology—a suspicion that would only grow stronger over the course of his life. But the second famous entry from this era, written in 1838, records an epiphany in which the gospel does become truth for him: There is an indescribable joy that glows all through us just as inexplicably as the apostle’s exclamation breaks forth for no apparent reason: “Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice.” –Not a joy over this or that, but the soul’s full outcry “with tongue and mouth and from the bottom of the heart”; “I rejoice for my joy, by, in, with, about, over, for, and with my joy”—a heavenly refrain which, as it were, suddenly interrupts our other singing, a joy which cools and refreshes like a breath of air, a breeze from the trade winds which blow across the plains of Mamre to the everlasting mansions. ( JP, 5:5324)

We know little about the circumstances of this experience, though some have suggested that it accompanied a reconciliation between Kierkegaard and his father. Whatever the external cause, it marks a turning point in Kierkegaard’s life. Parish records reveal that Kierkegaard would take communion some two weeks later in Vor Frue Kirke after having stayed away from the sacrament for nearly two years.11 Two and a half months after Kierkegaard wrote this entry, his father died. Although one might have expected him to do the opposite, Kierkegaard began applying himself in earnest to his theological studies at this time. He took and passed the examinations in July 1840, receiving the grade laudabilis and ranked fourth out of sixty-three students.12 Kierkegaard spent a brief time in a pastoral seminary in 1840–1841, but he ultimately chose not to pursue ordination. Instead, in 1841, he submitted a magister dissertation in philosophy: The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates. Despite the philosophical nature of this treatise, with its fixation on Socrates and satires of Hegelianism, authentic Christian existence is one of its fundamental concerns. Kierkegaard presents Socrates as a model for Christian life because he was driven by an eros for truth that could find no satisfaction in positive knowledge and was oriented fundamentally toward existence rather than an ideal world of thought.13 Although Kierkegaard day11 Garff, Kierkegaard, 127–128. 12 Garff, Kierkegaard, 154. 13 Some Kierkegaard scholars question whether Kierkegaard in fact presents Socrates as a model to be emulated in The Concept of Irony. See John Lippitt, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought (London: Macmillan, 2000), 149–157; Sylvia Walsh, “Ironic Love: An Amorist Interpretation of Socratic Eros,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: “The Concept of Irony,” ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001). I defend the reading I summarize here in Carl S. Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 34–40.

236

Carl S. Hughes

dreamed at several later points in his life about the possibility of pursuing ordination and serving a quiet parish in the country, he never seriously pursued this goal. Indeed, he always refers to his signed religious writings as “discourses” or “speeches” [Taler], even though they look and sound like sermons, in order to signal that he was a layperson and lacked spiritual authority. Thus, even in his most obviously Christian texts, Kierkegaard positions himself more as a Socratic midwife than as a doctrinaire preacher or dogmatic theologian. Due to the enormous wealth he inherited from his father, he could afford to make writing his only profession for the rest of his life. In 1840, at the age of twenty-seven, Kierkegaard became engaged to Regine Olsen, a girl of fifteen. Their engagement lasted a little over a year before Kierkegaard broke it off—a decision that shaped the rest of his life and would be associated with him forever. In order to soften the blow to Regine and her family, Kierkegaard apparently strove in the weeks after the breakup to make himself seem as despicable as possible—a stratagem he fictionalized memorably in “The Seducer’s Diary” of Either/Or. When Regine asked him if he would ever marry, Kierkegaard reports in his journal that he replied out of “necessary cruelty”: “Yes, in ten years, when I have had my fling; I will have to have a lusty young girl to rejuvenate me” ( JP, 6:6472). When he visited the Olsen household during this period he apparently closed the conversation by saying “to the family as I took out my watch that if they had anything more to say they had better hurry, for I was going to the theater” ( JP, 6:6472). Kierkegaard reports in his journal that during this period he “spent the nights crying in [his] bed” ( JP, 6:6472). For the rest of his writing career, Kierkegaard reflects almost obsessively on the broken engagement story. He fictionalizes it in numerous tales of unhappy love, imagined personas of malicious seducers, and religious parables of romantic desire. As late as 1849, eight years after the end of the engagement, Kierkegaard began a new notebook of his journal titled “My Relationship to ‘Her’” ( JP, 6:6471–6473). He ultimately dedicates the entirety of his authorship to Regine Olsen, and in his will he bequeathed her his entire estate—a gesture that she, married to someone else then, understandably refused. Scholars have suggested a host of possible psychological and somatic explanations for why Kierkegaard ended the relationship and why it assumed such a central place in his life’s narrative, yet the motivation behind his action remains mysterious, in seeming fulfillment of a prediction Kierkegaard himself made. In 1842, he writes in his journal: “After my death no one will find in my papers the slightest information (this is my consolation) about what really has filled my life; no one will find the inscription in my innermost being that interprets everything and that often turns into events of prodigious importance to me that which the world would call bagatelles and which I regard as insignificant if I remove the secret note that interprets them” ( JP, 5:5645). Whatever the specific circumstances with

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

237

Regine, Kierkegaard seems to have determined that marriage to her was incompatible with his personal vocation as a Christian and as a writer. When she returned the engagement ring, he had its diamonds reset in the shape of a cross. The year 1843 saw the beginning of what Kierkegaard would call his “authorship” with the publication of three of his most enduringly famous books: Either/Or, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling. Yet none of these works is signed by “Søren Kierkegaard.” These books, like approximately half of his eventual corpus, were published pseudonymously—a rhetorical strategy common in German Romanticism tradition that Kierkegaard invested with singular philosophical and theological significance. Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity was rarely as simple as ascribing a given text to a false name. Rather, his pseudonymous works usually have multiple competing voices, none of which can be ascribed to Kierkegaard himself. Either/Or is the most extreme example of this phenomenon. This two-volume set presents itself as edited by one Victor Eremita, who writes a preface to the whole. Volume One contains the writings of an aesthete who goes by the initial “A.” Volume Two contains a pair of lengthy letters to A from a Judge named William. Yet each of these authors appends additional texts by others: A, the famous “Seducer’s Diary,” which he claims to have found within an antique desk; the Judge, a sermon by a country parson. Eremita writes that in this strange archive, “one author becomes enclosed within the other like the boxes in a Chinese puzzle” (EO, 1:9). Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity has always fostered vigorous debate among his interpreters. It makes the question of the degree to which Kierkegaard should be described as a Christian theologian especially fraught. Did Kierkegaard share the irreligious orientation of many of his pseudonyms? Can the contrasting perspectives of his various voices somehow be synthesized? If not, what are Kierkegaard’s “real” views? In 1849, Kierkegaard wrote a text titled The Point of View for My Work as an Author in which he asserts that his entire authorship has a unified Christian purpose from beginning to end, but that this purpose could only be accomplished through indirect communication. Kierkegaard argues that what Christendom needs is not the refinement of any particular point of doctrine, but renewed existential commitment among those calling themselves Christians. One of the most consistent arguments of Kierkegaard’s authorship is that faith is not merely a matter of intellectual assent, but is, in the words of Fear and Trembling, “a task for a whole lifetime” (FT, 7). Again casting himself as a Socratic figure, Kierkegaard describes his use of pseudonymity and aestheticism as a maieutic endeavor intended “to deceive into the truth” through subjective awakening and edification (PV, 7). As evidence of his consistent Christian purpose, Kierkegaard also notes in The Point of View that he began publishing signed religious discourses as early as 1843, even if these attracted little notice at first. Throughout his career, Kierke-

238

Carl S. Hughes

gaard published dual streams of aesthetic and religious texts, the one pseudonymous, the other usually signed.14 It is tempting to read the signed religious discourses as offering precisely what seems lacking in the pseudonymous works: a definitive summation of Kierkegaard’s own teachings as a Christian theologian. Yet Kierkegaard rejects this assumption in The Point of View. He argues that the “duplexity” of his authorship—its simultaneously aesthetic and religious character—is so essential to his understanding of Christian communication that he can never transcend it (even in The Point of View itself).15 As he explains, “the duplexity, the equivocalness, is deliberate, is something the author knows about more than anyone else, is the essential dialectical qualification of the whole authorship, and therefore has a deeper basis” (PV, 29). This deeper basis is Kierkegaard’s belief that Christian truth cannot be expressed in an objective way because of its fundamentally existential character. In the same way that his 1835 journal entry from Gilleleje demands a truth that is truth “for me,” so too Kierkegaard suggests here that genuine Christian truth is of such a kind that it can only be lived. The years 1844–1846 saw the publication of key texts such as Philosophical Fragments (written by Johannes Climacus, 1844), The Concept of Anxiety (written by Vigilius Haufniensis, 1844), Stages on Life’s Way (edited by Hilarius Bookbinder, 1845), and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments” (written by Johannes Climacus and edited by Søren Kierkegaard, 1846). The writings of Johannes Climacus listed above deserve special mention in any consideration of Kierkegaard as theologian because they are among his most Christological texts—focused especially on the paradox of the incarnation and what it means to relate to Christ in faith. Arguing against the bromide that what makes faith challenging is that Christians today live so many centuries after Christ walked the earth, Climacus argues that becoming a follower of Christ would have been at least as challenging for Jesus’ historical contemporaries as it is for Christians today. (The only advantage he grants to Jesus’ original followers is that they were not burdened by the distracting accretions of some 1800 years of Christian theology.) Defining faith as passionate subjective relationship to paradox, Climacus argues that one can never definitively be a Christian; one is, at best, always only in the process of becoming one. 14 This duality in Kierkegaard’s authorial output continued even after the aesthetic dimension of his authorship became less prominent. Kierkegaard published a purely aesthetic text as late as 1848, The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, by Inter et Inter, to accompany the signed texts Works of Love and Practice in Christianity. 15 I analyze the rhetorical paradoxes of The Point of View in Carl S. Hughes, “Communicating Earnestness: Kierkegaard and Derrida Respond to Their (Poorest) Readers” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: “The Point of View,” ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010).

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

239

Philosophical Fragments is able to define the challenge of relating to paradox abstractly and “algebraically” in little more than a hundred pages (PF, 91). The Concluding Unscientific Postscript to this so-called “pamphlet” is dedicated to what it would mean to actually live out Christian becoming, and it runs an overwhelming 630 pages. Wrestling throughout with the distinctive challenges of Christian communication, Climacus famously describes truth as “subjectivity,” “inwardness,” and “appropriation.” Yet he then goes on to illustrate in a virtuosic performative way that each of these appellations is self-defeating. No sooner does he affirm that Christian truth is inwardness than he must call even this statement into question. His efforts to give subjectivity central place in his account of Christianity are all susceptible to being appropriated or aufgehoben by Hegelian speculation. As he laments, “direct communication about what it means to exist and about inwardness will only have the result that the speculative thinker will benevolently take it in hand and let one slip in along with it. The system is hospitable!” (CUP, 1:250). There can be no such thing, he insists, as “a barker of inwardness” (CUP, 1:77). Again, we see that Kierkegaard transforms the task of the theologian from the statement of objective truths to the edification of readers in their ongoing journeys of becoming. The year 1846 was a turning point in Kierkegaard’s career—both in his relationship to the public and in the nature of his writing. In December 1845, P.L. Møller, a prominent personality in the satirical newspaper The Corsair, published a negative review of Stages on Life’s Way. The review was not entirely negative: Møller praised Kierkegaard’s “brilliant wit and…genuine humor,” described Fear and Trembling as a modern classic, and said Kierkegaard had the capacity to become “a real literary genius” (COR, 99, 100). However, he criticized Kierkegaard for diluting the aesthetic pleasures of his writings with excess religiousness, for being long-winded, for being obsessive to the point of seeming deranged, and for his conduct in relation to Regine. Kierkegaard, who never took criticism well, responded with a defense of his writings and an attack on P.L. Møller and The Corsair. Happy for the publicity, the newspaper made Kierkegaard a prime target of its satire for several months, publishing cartoons mocking him as self-centered, abstruse, awkwardly dressed, and hunchbacked. The episode seems to have greatly wounded Kierkegaard’s psyche. In his journal he describes himself as having become a “martyr of laughter” (COR, 236). His writings from this point forward become fixated on the themes of persecution, suffering, and martyrdom on behalf of Christianity. Kierkegaard’s output after the Corsair “affair” is usually referred to as his “second authorship.” His writings from this period play less with pseudonymity (though they do not eliminate it entirely), and they speak in more recognizably Christian idioms. Kierkegaard publishes Works of Love in 1847 and Christian Discourses in 1848—both under his own name and both emphasizing the de-

240

Carl S. Hughes

mands of Christian living. If the inwardness of faith is a key emphasis of Kierkegaard’s first authorship, the outward manifestation of faith in the form of good works is a key theme of the second. In these texts, Kierkegaard emphasizes that Christ is not only a gift [Gave] of grace, but also a task [Opgave] of imitation. He describes suffering for one’s faith as a negative mark of authentic Christianity. Indeed, he speaks frequently during this period of the “double danger” of Christian life: not only the suffering that comes from serving others rather than oneself, but also the suffering of being mocked and persecuted precisely for having made this choice. During this period, Kierkegaard also developed new strategies for the indirect communication of his Christian message.16 From 1848–1851, he published a series of signed texts that he called Discourses at the Communion on Friday. The Friday Communion service in Vor Frue Kirke, Copenhagen’s most prominent church, serves as a kind of stage setting for these discourses, which make implicit reference not only to the movements of this liturgy but also to the aesthetics of this ecclesial space, especially its celebrated sculptures of Christ and the twelve apostles by Berthel Thorvaldsen.17 A second new rhetorical tactic that Kierkegaard developed during this period was his invention of the pseudonym AntiClimacus, meaning he who goes “above” or “beyond” Johannes Climacus. AntiClimacus is the author of The Sickness unto Death (1849) and Practice in Christianity (1850). The first book is an incisive psychological investigation of Christian selfhood, the second a rigorous call to the imitation of Christ. The pseudonym of Anti-Climacus is different from all the others because Kierkegaard employs it to signal not that the views expressed are beneath him, but that they are so elevated and ideal that he cannot live up to them (PC, 280). Kierkegaard went largely silent from 1851–1854, yet he roared back onto the Danish cultural and ecclesial scene in 1854. When J.P. Mynster, the bishop of Zealand in the Danish state church, died in 1854, Kierkegaard’s nemesis, H.L. Martensen, gave his eulogy (and ultimately succeeded Mynster as bishop). Martensen infuriated Kierkegaard by calling the deceased bishop a genuine “truth-witness,” indeed, part of the “holy chain of truth-witnesses that stretches 16 Roger Poole highlights the indirection within even Kierkegaard’s signed writing from this period in Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993), especially 233–261. 17 The Communion Discourses are collected together in Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011). For a thorough history of the Danish Friday Communion liturgy, see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, “Søren Kierkegaard at Friday Communion in the Church of Our Lady,” trans. K. Brian Söderquist, in International Kierkegaard Commentary: “Without Autority,” ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006). I offer a rhetorical and theological analysis of these texts in relation to their aesthetic-liturgical “stage setting” in Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire, 81–163.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

241

through the ages from the days of the apostles” (TM, 3). Kierkegaard could not abide the assertion that Mynster, whom he had so often accused of accommodating Christianity to the world, was a witness akin to Christ’s apostles. Kierkegaard began his “attack on Christendom” with a newspaper article in February 1854 that bore the incendiary title, “Was Bishop Mynster a ‘TruthWitness,’ One of ‘the Authentic Truth-Witnesses’—Is This the Truth?” (TM, 3). He argues here that Christendom became unmoored from the Christianity of the New Testament when it lost sight of the original Greek word for witness: martyron, martyr. In stark contrast to the acclaim, prosperity, and security enjoyed by Mynster, Kierkegaard writes that an authentic “truth-witness is a person who in poverty, witnesses for the truth, in poverty in lowliness and abasement, is so unappreciated, hated, detested, so mocked, insulted, laughed to scorn—so poor that he perhaps has not always had daily bread, but he received the daily bread of persecution in abundance every day” (TM, 5–6). For the next year and a half, Kierkegaard continued to publish newspaper articles and a subscription-based series of pamphlets titled The Moment in which he condemned the old bishop, the new bishop, and ultimately the entire Danish clergy. His attacks during this period became so extreme that many of his contemporaries assumed him to have gone mad.18 He goes so far as to describe the pastors of the state church as “cannibals” because they were extracting their livelihood from the genuine Christianity that they themselves had slain (TM, 321–323). In some ways Kierkegaard’s attack upon the state church may seem analogous to the efforts of N.F.S. Grundtvig at this time to loosen state control of the church.19 Kierkegaard’s brother Peter Christian, a pastor in the state church, was deeply involved in Grundtvig’s movement of populist pietism. Yet Kierkegaard allowed himself no allies in his attack upon Christendom. In fact, he became irreparably estranged from his brother during the last year of his life in part because of his brother’s Grundtvigian tendencies.20 Kierkegaard argues that Grundtvig wanted nothing more than legal freedom for the People’s Church movement and otherwise would “let stand the whole enormous illusion that the state passes itself off as being Christian, that the people imagine themselves to be Christians”—an illusion with the result that “every single day a gross affront is committed, high treason against God by falsifying what Christianity is” (TM, 18 Garff, Kierkegaard, 735. 19 Resources on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Grundtvig can be found in Anders Holm, “Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig: The Matchless Giant” in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Farnham, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); and Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 198–237. 20 In July 1855, Peter Christian Kierkegaard gave a speech at a conference for pastors arguing against elements of his brother’s pseudonymous works. This specifically is what caused the final rift between the two brothers. See Garff, Kierkegaard, 769.

242

Carl S. Hughes

207). Among his posthumous papers, Kierkegaard left a screed against his “spineless”21 brother, who he said reeked of the Grundtvigians the way a drunk reeks of alcohol (TM, 583). The two did not speak to each other after June 1855.22 In September 1855, Kierkegaard collapsed in the street. He spent forty-one days in Royal Frederik’s Hospital, where he suffered a variety of debilitating physical symptoms, but their cause was never clear. He continued his denunciation of the established church to the end. When his brother Peter Christian arrived to visit him in the hospital in the hope of bringing him Holy Communion, Kierkegaard refused even to allow him into his room, though he said that he would happily receive the sacrament from someone who was not a pastor. Kierkegaard died on November 11. In an irony that one suspects Kierkegaard would have predicted with bitterness, he was given a large state-church funeral in Copenhagen’s Vor Frue Kirke, and Peter Christian preached the eulogy. Kierkegaard was a mere forty-two years old. In his short life, he had penned some thirty books and an even vaster quantity of journals and papers. We have already pondered the extent to which this corpus should be described as theology. Let us now turn to a second question: To what extent should Kierkegaard’s writings be interpreted as Lutheran theology?

Kierkegaard as Lutheran Theologian The question of Kierkegaard’s Lutheranism involves Kierkegaard’s evaluation of Luther, his relationship to the Lutheranism of his day, and his own constructive contributions to the Lutheran theological tradition.23 Yet it is virtually impossible to separate these levels of inquiry because Kierkegaard often expresses his own “Lutheran theology” in the form of critical evaluations of Luther and the history of Lutheranism. His critiques can be scathing, yet they are rooted in deeply Lutheran themes.

21 TM, 587. Like a number of Kierkegaard’s bitterest accusations against his brother in this unpublished text, this one was eventually crossed out. 22 Kierkegaard says on his deathbed that Peter Christian tried to visit him at his home after giving the speech against his work, but Kierkegaard wouldn’t let him in. Hannay, Kierkegaard, 413. See also Garff, Kierkegaard, 769. 23 Resources on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Luther can be found in David Yoon-Jung and Joel D.S. Rasmussen, “Martin Luther: Reform, Secularization, and the Question of His ‘True Successor” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Farnham, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); and Lee C. Barrett, “Faith, Works, and the Uses of the Law: Kierkegaard’s Appropriation of Lutheran Doctrine” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: “For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!,” ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002).

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

243

An older generation of scholarship tended to minimize the influence of Luther and Lutheranism upon Kierkegaard, but more recent work stresses its importance.24 Nonetheless, although Kierkegaard refers to Luther frequently within his published works, it is fair to say that these references are often vague, especially in the first half of Kierkegaard’s writing career.25 There is little suggestion of a sustained, nuanced engagement with a representative sampling of Luther’s writings. Moreover, in his journal, Kierkegaard writes in 1847 that “I have never really read anything by Luther” ( JP, 3:2463). Although this entry should almost certainly not be taken literally, or at least should be read with a heavy emphasis on the really,26 it does mark a turning point in Kierkegaard’s relationship to Luther. After this, he devoted himself to a systematic reading of Luther’s sermons in the Danish collection En christelig Postille over several years.27 Kierkegaard had no pretensions of being a Luther scholar, but he was, to the extent that he was a theologian, a Lutheran theologian. His theological education took place within a Lutheran university; the vast majority of his theological interlocutors were Lutheran; and his worship life as an adult was exclusively in the context of the Danish Lutheran state church. The only influence on him from outside Lutheranism was the Moravian pietism of his childhood. In what follows, I consider three of Kierkegaard’s most recurring critiques of Luther and Lutheranism in his journals and published works. As we will see, each of these critiques turns out to form a basis of Kierkegaard’s own distinctively Lutheran theology.

A. The Dangers of Established Lutheranism The first and most obvious of Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Lutheranism is his condemnation of the state Lutheran church and Lutheran “Christendom” more generally. His attack upon the assumption that Denmark is an intrinsically Christian country with automatically Christian citizens becomes almost febrile in the last year of his life, but it runs throughout his entire authorship.

24 See Yoon-Jung and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 184–185. 25 Yoon-Jung and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 185. 26 Amy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 202n.9. 27 M. Luther, En christelig Postille: Sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tydske samling, tr. and ed. J. Thisted (Copenhagen: Wahl, 1828). Kierkegaard refers to his reading of the sermons collected here as occurring “according to plan” in JP, 3:2465.

244

Carl S. Hughes

Kierkegaard’s arguments against established Lutheranism can be grouped into two classes. The first has its roots in his vision of true Christianity as a nevercompleted process of striving. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, the idea that being Christian derives from nothing more than being born in a particular time and place is absurd. In The Point of View, he attacks this idea as follows: Everyone who in earnest and also with some clarity of vision considers what is called Christendom, or the condition in a so-called Christian country, must without any doubt immediately have serious misgivings. What does it mean, after all, that all these thousands and thousands as a matter of course call themselves Christians!…. People who perhaps never once go to church, never think about God, never name his name except when they curse! People to whom it has never occurred that their lives should have some duty to God, people who either maintain that a certain civil impunity is the highest or do not find even this to be entirely necessary! Yet all these people, even those who insist that there is no God, they all are Christians, call themselves Christians, are recognized as Christians by the state, are buried as Christians by the Church, are discharged as Christians to eternity! (PV, 41)

Kierkegaard goes so far as to call into question the Lutheran practice of infant baptism because it makes becoming Christian something automatic and thus trivial. Until two years after Kierkegaard’s death, the baptism of infants was compulsory under Danish law (CUP, 2:255n.616). Kierkegaard lambasts the idea that people should consider themselves Christians “solely by virtue of a baptismal certificate” (CUP, 1:363) such that “the whole thing [is] decided at the age of two weeks on September 7 in the course of five minutes” (CUP, 1:368). Kierkegaard questions the application of Luther’s baptismal theology within Lutheran Christendom, yet his subjectivist motivation for doing so resonates in a fundamental way with the pro me character of Luther’s own theology. In the journal entry from 1847 from which I have already quoted, Kierkegaard exults in this discovery: “Wonderful! The category ‘for you’ (subjectivity, inwardness) with which Either/Or concludes (only the truth which builds up is truth for you) is Luther’s own. I have never really read anything by Luther. But now I open up his sermons—and right there in the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent he says ‘for you,’ on this everything depends” ( JP, 3:2463). Kierkegaard’s second argument against established Lutheranism is that it assumes a false congruency between Christianity and culture. As we saw in his irate reaction to Martensen’s eulogy for Mynster, Kierkegaard believes that the more authentically one is Christian, the more one should expect to suffer and be persecuted. Christendom suggests just the opposite: that Christianity can be a route to security, prosperity, and esteem. Kierkegaard lays much of the blame for this assumption at Luther’s feet. In one of his most biting dismissals of Luther, he writes:

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

245

Luther has actually done incalculable harm by not becoming a martyr. For one thing it is odd for a person designated to be God’s man to the degree he was to end up in ordinary comfortable association with adoring admirers and followers. It can so very easily get to be pointless. Normally the life of such a person is so dangerous while he is living that pointlessness cannot set in, and when he is snatched away in a violent death pointlessness is again avoided. It was different with Luther. Although it is true that for some years he was salt, his later life was not devoid of pointlessness. The Table Talks are an example: a man of God sitting in placid comfort, ringed by admiring adorers who believe that if he simply breaks wind it is a revelation or the result of inspiration. ( JP, 3:2546)

Kierkegaard judges the fame and popular support that Luther had acquired by the end of his life to be a black mark against him. From his perspective, “true reforming always makes life difficult, lays on burdens, and therefore the true reformer is always slain, as if it were enmity toward mankind” ( JP, 3:2481). Kierkegaard knows, of course, that Luther risked his life by opposing the papacy, yet he comes to see this as comparatively easier to opposing society as such. He writes in his journal: “Luther, you do have an enormous responsibility, for when I look more closely I see ever more clearly that you toppled the Pope—and set ‘the public’ on the throne” ( JP, 3:2548). Kierkegaard suggests that a life within Christendom that does not draw the scorn of the public is almost certainly not a life lived in imitation of Christ. Even or especially within Christendom, being a witness and being a martyr amount to the same thing.

B. Law and Gospel as Unresolvable Paradox Another of Kierkegaard’s recurring criticisms of Lutheranism has to do with the categories of law and gospel that are so deeply engrained in Lutheran preaching. Kierkegaard appropriates the law/gospel distinction, yet he radicalizes its application in a manner that has far-ranging implications for his vision of theology as such. According to the usual Lutheran formula, the preaching of the law is meant to foster penitential awareness of the need for grace. Once this is achieved, the law gives way to the gospel’s message of comfort. Kierkegaard criticizes this pattern because it separates the law and the gospel into two discreet stages, with the second always triumphing over the first. He believes that this homiletical pattern cheapens grace by allowing it to become nothing more than a doctrine. In his view, law and gospel should be understood as standing in constant dialectical tension as a paradox that structures Christian life and Christian communication in fundamental ways. Kierkegaard frequently criticizes Luther and Lutheranism for using the law/ gospel paradigm one-sidedly. In one journal entry, he criticizes Luther as follows:

246

Carl S. Hughes

“The way in which even Luther speaks of the law and gospel is still not the teaching of Christ. Luther separates the two: the law and the gospel. First the law and then the gospel, which is sheer leniency, etc. This way Christianity becomes an optimism anticipating that we are to have an easy life in this world” ( JP, 3:2554). Similarly, Kierkegaard faults Luther for “one-sidedly draw[ing] Paul forward and us[ing] the gospels less” ( JP, 3:2507). From Kierkegaard’s perspective, Christ is not simply a figurehead for a metaphysical doctrine about grace, but a concrete pattern for living. Kierkegaard asserts that the ideal Christian communication would be one that preaches law and gospel simultaneously, in one and the same breath, each refusing to give the other the final word. He often illustrated this point by interpreting specific Bible verses as fully law and fully gospel at once. For example, he interpreted Jesus’ words “Come to me” (Matt. 11:28) as both the most gracious of invitations (since it is the savior who says it) and the strictest of demands (since a lifetime of following Jesus will be one of self-denial) (CD, 262–267). Similarly, he interprets the verse “one who is forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47) as law, because it condemns those who love little, and gospel, because it suggests that love can increase through the experience of being forgiven (WA, 169–177). Kierkegaard summarizes his ideal vision of Christian preaching as follows: “It is easy to win people by enticing; it is also easy to frighten them away by repelling. But, if possible, with a fervent inwardness that no one could resist, to invite them to come, and in addition with a terror that could teach even the bravest to shudder, to cry out, ‘Take care!’—indeed, that is difficult” (CD, 175). Kierkegaard derives the simultaneity of law and gospel from the paradoxical duality of Christ himself. He follows Luther in characterizing Christ not only as divine and human but also as both gift and task. Yet he intensifies this paradox beyond its conventional use within Lutheranism. If traditional Lutheran theology describes Christ as a gift that inspires the believer to take up the task of love in freedom, Kierkegaard emphasizes more strongly that Christ’s life functions as a prototype prescribing how Christians must live. Kierkegaard is thoroughly Lutheran in his insistence that all believers ultimately fail at this task (e. g., PC, 67– 68). He explains in an 1849 journal entry: “Christ as pattern ought to jack up the price so enormously that the prototype itself teaches men to resort to grace.”28 28 JP, 3:75–76. Kierkegaard has sometimes been described as advocating a greater place for the third use of the law in Lutheranism, but I find this claim potentially misleading. He certainly advocates for the continued preaching of the law to believing Christians, and he certainly believes that genuine faith will issue in ever greater good works. Yet this is different from saying that a believer’s disciplined adherence of the law can lead directly to righteous life. I read Kierkegaard as espousing the more dialectical Lutheran view that good works are the product of Christian freedom in response to grace. For a different perspective, see Barrett, “Faith, Works, and the Uses of the Law,” 91–106.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

247

This is the familiar second Lutheran use of the law, yet Kierkegaard diverges from traditional Lutheranism by finding the law embodied most fully in Christ— rather than merely, say, in the Ten Commandments.29 From Kierkegaard’s perspective, law and gospel do not represent so much a duality between the Old and New Testaments as a paradox intrinsic to Christ himself. The more the Christian believes in Christ, the more she must strive to imitate him, and the more she strives to imitate him, the more she must rely on his grace through faith. Kierkegaard never questions that grace and comfort were what Luther needed to hear in his own life. But he does condemn the way subsequent Lutherans interpret Luther’s particular experience as a basis for timeless dogma. He argues that “the tragedy about Luther” is that his genuine need for comfort and reassurance in the face of excessive legalism has been taken to imply that Christian theology should “therefore be converted in toto to this, to soothing and reassuring anguished consciences” ( JP, 3:2550). He describes this danger as follows: Lutheranism is a corrective—but a corrective made into the normative, into the sum total, is eo ipso confusing in the following generation (where that for which it was a corrective does not exist)….The Lutheran corrective, when it independently is supposed to be the sum total of Christianity, produces the most refined kind of worldliness and paganism. (TM, 452)

Kierkegaard values Lutheranism as a “corrective,” but he condemns its glorification as the “sum total of Christianity.” In his journal, he reproaches Luther for not being sufficiently aware of his theology’s corrective nature. Rather than recognizing that he is a “patient,” Luther too often casts himself as a “physician”: The more I see of Luther the more clear it is to me that he also is a part of this confusion of mistaking the patient for the physician. He is an exceedingly important patient for Christendom, but he is not the physician; he has a patient’s passion for expressing and describing his suffering and what he feels he needs to relieve it, but he does not have the physician’s comprehensive view. And to reform Christianity requires first and foremost a comprehensive view of the whole of Christianity. ( JP, 3:2550)

The “comprehensive view” for which Kierkegaard calls here is one that expresses both sides of the person of Christ as gift and task, gospel and law. In Kierkegaard’s estimation, Luther consistently tilts the balance in favor of the first element in each dichotomy. One might easily conclude that Kierkegaard’s distinction between one-sided “correctives” and “a comprehensive view of the whole of Christianity” implies that systematic theological doctrine is the highest form of Christian truth. By this standard, H.L. Martensen would be the consummate theologian of Kierkegaard’s 29 Barrett, “Faith, Works, and the Uses of the Law,” 89.

248

Carl S. Hughes

age. Yet Kierkegaard emphatically rejects this view. He criticizes Luther for confusing his patient’s perspective for that of a doctor, yet he never suggests that he or any other theologian has a doctor’s perspective. In an 1852 journal entry, he describes his own authorship as a “corrective” in the same way as Luther’s was (TM, 422). From his perspective, no single theological voice or system of doctrines can be more. Kierkegaard concludes that in his age faithfulness to Christ and even to Luther may require saying something very different than Luther did in his. Indeed, he predicts that Luther’s “true successor will come to resemble the exact opposite of Luther” ( JP, 3:2518). But does the proper diagnosis and administration of theological “cures” not require a physician’s comprehensive understanding? In order to administer the necessary amount of law or gospel in any given context, must one not consult some sort of objective standard, such as The Book of Concord or a systematic theology like Martensen’s? Kierkegaard addresses these sorts of questions in The Point of View and late journal entries. He argues explicitly in these texts that no human being, himself included, can hold a “comprehensive view” of divine truth. He goes so far as to assert that God alone is responsible for all genuinely Christian communication, including his own. This is a surprising statement, but Kierkegaard is not claiming that authentic theology—least of all his own—is the product of a direct revelation from God (PV, 74). Rather, he is stating more humbly that true Christian writing is always an expression of passionate devotion to God, not objective theological mastery (PV, 71). Kierkegaard concludes The Point of View by imagining his own future “poet” speaking of him after his death as follows: The dialectical structure he completed, the parts of which are previous separate works, he could not attribute to any human being, even less would he attribute it to himself. If he should have attributed it to anyone, it would have been to Governance, to whom it was indeed attributed day after day, year after year, by the author who historically died of a mortal disease but poetically died of a longing for eternity in order unceasingly to do nothing else than to thank God. (PV, 97)

Kierkegaard suggests here that his writing is the product of a “longing for eternity” and a desire to praise God without ceasing. It is in this sense that God, the object of his controlling passion, is responsible for his writing. Longing and praise define his relationship to God precisely because absolute knowledge will be forever beyond his grasp. In the journal entry from 1852 in which Kierkegaard affirms that he is nothing more than a “corrective,” he describes the expression of theological truth as requiring a great multiplicity of contrasting voices, all passionately devoted to God. He first compares himself, as a corrective, to “a little dash of cinnamon” that a cook adds to a dish (TM, 3422). In this analogy, God alone is the cook; Kier-

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

249

kegaard and his work are the cinnamon; and presumably there are many other spices in the dish as well. Kierkegaard describes each of these spices as “sacrificed” to the overall taste of the meal. He then introduces a second metaphor for the same idea, comparing the multitude of authentic Christian writers to a vast choir, of which God is the conductor. As in the first analogy, he writes that each individual voice must be “sacrificed” to the sound of the whole, yet he finds consolation in the thought that, for some reader somewhere, his own voice may be what communicates Christian truth. This is how he describes his own voice within the massed choir of Christian communication: [God] knows with the most intimate understanding how to make it blessed for [a single author] to be sacrificed so that among the thousands of heterogeneous voices, each of which in its own way expresses the same thing, his voice also is heard, and perhaps his in particular is truly heard de profundis—that God is love. The bird on the twig, the lily in the field, the deer in the forest, the fish in the sea countless crowds of happy humans jubilate: God is love. But underneath, supporting, as it were, all these sopranos as the bass part does, sounds the de profundis from the sacrificed ones: God is love. (TM, 422– 23)

Kierkegaard here summarizes the truth of Christianity that each voice in the choir is singing in its own way with the simple Johannine statement, “God is love.” This is yet another of the biblical aphorisms that Kierkegaard interprets as expressing the fullness of law and gospel at once—as both an affirmation of God’s forgiving grace and a rigorous call to imitate God in loving (e. g., WL, 62– 63; TM, 294–295). Kierkegaard believes that if this paradox really is the heart of Christianity, then it can only be expressed by “thousands of heterogeneous voices.” His consolation is that somewhere his own voice may be what makes “God is love” truth for someone else. With the panoply of pseudonyms in his authorship, Kierkegaard in a sense creates his own miniature choir. But he insists that Governance alone is the true conductor of even this small ensemble. Moreover, he implies that we should expect Governance to continue to send new voices to sing law and gospel in new corrective ways in new contexts. Just as he resists absolutizations of Luther’s theology, so too he resists absolutizations of his own. For Kierkegaard, expressing the duality of law and gospel is, like Christian life, a never-completed task.

250

Carl S. Hughes

C. Faith as Desire and Participation Kierkegaard’s Lutheran emphasis on the paradoxical nature of Christian truth leads him to depict faith in what may initially seem like a decidedly un-Lutheran way: as passionate desire, even eros, for the God revealed in Christ. Luther famously condemns the eros of Pseudo-Dionysius as a form of works-righteousness and a rejection of the grace offered in Christ. This tendency reaches its apogee in the agape/eros dichotomy developed by Anders Nygren, which greatly influenced Protestant theology in the twentieth century. Although Nygren’s paradigm shaped the way Kierkegaard was translated and interpreted for decades, one of Kierkegaard’s most valuable contributions to the Lutheran theological tradition is, in my view, that he develops a theology of faith as eros that is rooted in Lutheran Christocentrism and grace-alone theology.30 The desire for God that lies at the heart of his vision of faith is different from the desire that Lutheran theology has reflexively condemned for three reasons: its infinite character, its source in God, and its fundamental orientation to the world. Unlike theologies of desire that portray God as the ultimate satisfaction of human yearning, Kierkegaard consistently suggests that the closer the believer draws to God in desire, the more passionately the desire burns. For example, in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard distinguishes between “Platonic eros,” which finds satisfaction in positive knowledge, and “Socratic eros,” which refuses all satisfactions in knowledge or doctrine. He describes Socrates as an “eroticist” par excellence and models his own style of communication on his.31 The theme of Christian communication as an elicitation of desire runs throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship, but he expresses this vision most succinctly in the Communion Discourses. In the opening prayer of the first of these discourses, he writes: “We pray that those who are gathered here today may come to the Lord’s table with heartfelt longing, and that when they leave it they may go with intensified longing for him, our Savior and Redeemer” (CD, 251). From Kierkegaard’s perspective, Christian communication should elicit ever more passionate desire in the same way that the sacrament does. What is most significant from a Lutheran perspective about this insatiable longing is that Kierkegaard portrays it as a gift of grace, not as a work of human effort. The prayer quoted above begins by affirming the divine source of all true longing: “Father in heaven! We know very well that you are the one who gives both to will and to accomplish, and that the longing, when it draws us to renew fellowship with our Savior and Redeemer, is also from you” (CD, 251). Kierke30 I develop the points in this section much more extensively throughout Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire. 31 CI, 178; the Hongs translate Erotiker as amorist.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

251

gaard emphasizes the Christological orientation of this longing in a later Communion Discourse: “O Christ, you who are not, cruelly, love of such a kind that you are only the object, indifferent to whether anyone loves you or not… No mercifully or lovingly, or in love, you are love of such a kind that you yourself love forth the love that loves you, encourages it to love you much” (WA, 137). In contrast to Lutheran critics of eros, Kierkegaard interprets spiritual desire not as a rejection of grace but as a response to it. Indeed, he presents Christ as both desire’s object and its source. Further, whereas traditional Lutheranism frequently portrays eros for God as competing with the Christian duty to love and serve people, Kierkegaard takes the one as the engine of the other. In contrast to the ladder of love described by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, Kierkegaard does not present desire for God as leading into ever more ethereal realms of spirit disconnected from human life. To the contrary, Kierkegaard argues that longing for the God revealed in Christ incites ever increasing love for the people of this world. This is one of the key features of the “Socratic eros” described in The Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard portrays it not as “a weak and sentimental sneaking out of the world,” but rather as “a sound and healthy love” that affirms actuality as the sphere where human beings are called to act (CI, 329). Kierkegaard expresses a similar view in Works of Love, where he insists that genuine love for God means that “one must first and foremost give up all imaginary and exaggerated ideas about a dreamworld where the object of love should be sought and found.” To the contrary, “the more [the believer] loves the unseen, the more he will love the people he sees” (WL, 161, 160). Even as this account of desire responds to distinctively Lutheran concerns, Kierkegaard also faults Luther in his journal for minimizing the biblical theme of love for God. After reading one of Luther’s sermons in the Danish devotional postil, he writes: “The conclusion of Luther’s sermon…where he makes out that faith is superior to love, is sophistry. On the whole Luther always interprets love only as love towards one’s neighbor, just as if it were not also a duty to love God. Essentially Luther had substituted faith for love toward God and then called love —love toward one’s neighbor” ( JP, 3:2480). Kierkegaard seeks to reinvigorate the theme of love for God within a Lutheran context that frequently minimizes it— making faith definitive of human-divine relations and agapic love definitive of intra-human ones. He calls for a renewed emphasis on love for God and characterizes this love in passionate, erotic terms. Although no one would accuse Kierkegaard of being insufficiently focused on sin and the need for repentance, Kierkegaard also calls widespread Lutheran assumptions into question by articulating a goal of Christian life that goes beyond the mere forgiveness of sin: namely, communion with, participation in, or even union with God. To be sure, Kierkegaard never asserts a doctrine of de-

252

Carl S. Hughes

ification in any direct way. Yet he describes the telos of faith’s journey in relational and transformative terms that strongly evoke this theme. He uses a number of different names for the believer’s relationship to God and Christ throughout his writings: “contemporaneity” (in Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript); “kinship” (in Works of Love), and “communion” in the Communion Discourses.32 In the first of the Communion Discourses, Kierkegaard depicts this relationship in strongly participatory terms: “Indeed, you are really to live in and together with him; he is to be and become your life, so that you do not live to yourself, no longer live yourself, but Christ lives in you” (CD, 261). He returns to this point in the last of these texts: “This is why the Lord’s Supper is called communion with him. It is not only in memory of him, it is not only as a pledge that you have communion with him, but it is the communion, this communion that you are to strive to preserve in your daily life by more and more living yourself out of yourself and living yourself into him” (WA, 188). The Kierkegaardian journey of Christian becoming is a journey of transformation in the image of Christ. This theme resonates in intriguing ways with recent Finnish exegesis of Luther’s own vision of faith as Christ’s indwelling in the believer.33

Conclusion After decades of near oblivion outside of Denmark in the second half of the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard’s skyrocketing popularity in the twentieth left an indelible mark on the history of theology. Karl Barth would interpret him as a prophet of the “infinite qualitative difference” between God and humanity, as well as of the dangers of cultural Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would find inspiration in Kierkegaard as he developed his critique of “cheap grace.” Paul Tillich would take Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of anxiety as a starting point for his own theological analysis of the human condition. In more recent decades, Kierkegaard has been interpreted as everything from a closet Roman Catholic to a prophet of the death of God to a Christian philosophical apologist to a forerunner of post-structuralism. What I have tried to show in this chapter is that Kierkegaard is a vital member of the Lutheran theological tradition, expanding the possibilities of what this tradition can be while remaining faithful to its deepest 32 E. g., PF, 105; WL, 62; WA, 188. 33 See Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005); Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finish Interpretation of Martin Luther (Grand Rapids, MI: 1998); and Bruce Marshall, “Justification as Deification and Declaration,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4 (2002): 1–17.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

253

insights. Rather than being a static restatement of orthodoxy, Kierkegaard’s Lutheran theology is a call to endless transformation in relationship to Christ.

List of Abbreviations JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, asst. Gregor Malantschuk, 7 Volumes (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967–1978). From the series Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 26 Volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978– 1998) CD Christian Discourses; The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress (Vol. 17) CI The Concept of Irony; Schelling Lecture Notes (Vol. 2) COR The Corsair Affair (Vol. 13) CUP, 1, 2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments” (Vol. 12) EPW Early Polemical Writings: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle between the Old and the New SoapCellars (Vol. 1) EO, 1 Either/Or, I (Vol. 3) EO, 2 Either/Or, II (Vol. 4) FT Fear and Trembling; Repetition (Vol. 6) PC Practice in Christianity (Vol. 20) PF Philosophical Fragments; Johannes Climacus (Vol. 7) PV The Point of View: On My Work as an Author; The Point of View for My Work as an Author; Armed Neutrality (Vol. 22) TM The Moment and Late Writings: Articles from Fædrelandet; The Moment; This Must Be Said, So Let It Be Said; Christ’s Judgment on Official Christianity; The Changlessness of God (Vol. 23) WA Without Authority: The Lilly in the Field and the Bird of the Air; Two Ethical-Religious Essays; Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays; An Upbuilding Discourse; Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (Vol. 18) WL Works of Love (Vol. 16)

Christoffer H. Grundmann

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

Theodosius Harnack is one of the lesser known Lutheran theologians of the nineteenth century whose legacy lives on mainly in small circles of confessional Lutheranism in the U.S., Germany (especially at Erlangen), and the modern Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. He regularly finds mention in standard reference works and in treatises about his famous son, the eminent church historian Adolf v. Harnack (1851–1930). In other contexts he appears almost to have been forgotten, despite occasional rediscoveries of his ecclesiological reflections, as was the case during the Kirchenkampf in Nazi Germany and after World War II.1 Some authors dealing with topics on which Harnack also published—like practical theology and liturgy, church government and Luther’s theology—do take notice of him as well, with most of the critics tending to declare his contributions outdated and not relevant any longer. When the second edition of his monograph on Luther’s theology, the “first comprehensive study of Luther’s theology”2 ever and “the most important, actually the only relevant nineteenth-century theological book on Luther,”3 was published in 1927, it was regarded by some to be a “disaster” rather than a “gain,” and his son, Adolf, told the publisher that he would have strongly advised against it, if he would have had been consulted before its publication.4

1 See Martin Doerne, “Ein Weg zur wirklichen Gemeinde – Theodosius Harnack zur Frage der Gemeindesammlung,” Pastoralblätter 77, 9 ( Juni 1935): 513–526; Georg Merz, “Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung für die lutherische Kirche. Zu seinem 50. Todestag (geb. 3. 1. 1817, … 25. 9. 1889),” Monatsschrift für Pastoraltheologie zur Vertiefung des gesamten pfarramtlichen Wirkens 35 (1939): 338–44. See also the reprints of some of his works, like Die Kirche, das Amt, ihr Regiment (1862) in 1934, 1947, and 1964, and Luthers Theologie (1862/1886) in 1927 and 1969. 2 Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther – An Introduction to his Life and Work, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986), 220. 3 Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. 2nd revised and enlarged ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 82 (my translation). 4 See Merz, “Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung,” 344.

256

Christoffer H. Grundmann

Life and work5 Theodosius Andreas Harnack was born January 3, 1817, in St. Petersburg, then the imperial capital of the Russian Empire.6 His father, Carl Gottlieb Harnack, was a well-to-do master tailor (with a house and shop of his own) who had moved to St. Petersburg from East Prussia, where his progenitors were once settled by the Great Elector Frederick William (1620–1688) when they had to emigrate from Bohemia for reasons of their Protestant faith. (The family name Harnack means “miner; mine worker” in Czech.) His mother Christina, née Zenker, came from a Baltic German family of craftsmen from the Russian province Livonia (now: Latvia and Estonia), who also gave birth to two daughters, Maria and Dorothea. Conscious of their Prussian heritage—the Harnacks never became Russian subjects—and their Protestant roots in an environment of predominantly Russian Orthodox faith, the family lived a kind of pietistic-revivalist Christianity, owed in part to the influence of the remarkable Johannes Evangelista Goßner (1773– 1858), who—then still a Catholic priest—lived in St. Petersburg from 1820 to 1824 and drew crowds to his Bible studies. He stressed the importance of living an authentic personal faith in action, a message which appealed to many who were dissatisfied with restricting the life of faith to participation in the formal celebrations and rituals of the official church. Late in his life Harnack still recalled attending Goßner’s children’s services and the lasting impression this man had on him, whom he counted as one of his spiritual mentors. After all, it was Goßner who first kindled his interest in theology. The lay-pietism of the Herrnhut Brethren (Moravians), which became popular among Protestants in the Baltic 5 The compilation of these data is based on the critical use of the following main sources which sometimes show differences and inconsistencies. In order not to overload this contribution with too many references I decided to name here the most important literature availed of and to explain the methodology of its use. Preference was always given to the account of his son Adolf as recorded in the biography about him by his daughter—Theodosius’ granddaughter— Agnes von Zahn-Harnack in: Adolf von Harnack (Berlin: Hans Bott Verlag, 1936). The next main source is the account by his brother-in–law and colleague, Alexander von Oettingen (1827–1905) as published in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1905), 50:8–16; and the article “Harnack, Theodosius Andreas” by Martin Doerne in Neue Deutsche Biographie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1966), 7:690–691 (both at URL http://www. deutsche-biographie.de/pnd11870169X.html). Besides many other materials I also used the more recent interpretation of Theodosius Harnacks’ contribution to practical theology by Bernd Schröder, “Die Wissenschaft der sich selbst erbauenden Kirche: Theodosius Harnack,” in Geschichte der Praktischen Theologie – Dargestellt anhand ihrer Klassiker, Christian Grethlein and Michael Meyer-Blanck, eds. (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2000), 151– 206. 6 The dates differ in the sources due to the calendars used in the Russian Empire ( Julian) and in Germany (Gregorian) at that time. Some sources give the date of birth as Dec. 22, 1816, and the date of his death as Sept. 11, 1889. I follow the use of the Neue Deutsche Biographie, giving where appropriate the alternate date in square brackets [ ].

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

257

region, due to intensive missionary activity in the early nineteenth century, was yet another spiritual influence in the Harnack family. Parents and children used to attend the Herrnhut prayer-meetings on a regular basis. A devastating flood that hit St. Petersburg on Nov. [7] 19, 1824—the worst ever in the history of the city7—not only destroyed the Harnacks’ house and shop, ruining the family in an instant, but it also caused the sudden death of the mother8, while the father, with whom Theodosius was very close, died eight years later. Thus orphaned at the age of 15, Theodosius and his sisters were dependent on subsidies. With a stipend by the Crown the gifted boy in 1834 enrolled to study Protestant theology at the Imperial University of Dorpat (now: Tartu, Estonia), in those days the only place for such studies in all of Russia and the sole institution which prepared pastors for Lutheran churches in the Russian Empire, the Warsaw Consistory, and the Reformed Polish-Latvian Synod. During his three years at university Harnack kept to himself as a loner without noticeably bonding with anyone as a friend. Instead of participating in student activities or joining fashionable fraternities with their coercion to dueling, which he strictly opposed, he attended the prayer meetings of the Dorpat Moravians. The course of studies did not pose a serious challenge to the talented pious student, since the theology then taught at Dorpat was pietistic in character and based on a positivistic Biblicism which took Scripture authoritatively at face value and which programmatically banned historical criticism and critical rationalism.9 Completing his studies in 1837, Harnack became a private instructor to the noble family of Count von Stackelberg for the children on the estate Ellistfer near Dorpat, a position he held until 1840. After that, the aesthetically-minded Harnack left for a brief sojourn to Italy, where, according to his son, Adolf, he also worked for some time as a private instructor, before pursuing advanced theological studies at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Erlangen. At Bonn Harnack was drawn to the practical theologian Carl Immanuel Nitzsch (1787–1868), a Lutheran, whose design of the subject matter he later adopted. At Berlin he associated himself with another renowned Lutheran professor of practical theology, Gerhard Friedrich Strauß (1786–1863), who also was the royal court 7 See “List of floods in St. Petersburg” at URL http://www.nevariver.ru/flood_list.php (in Russian) and “Floods in Saint Petersburg” at URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Saint_Petersburg. – Since the calendar calculation in Russian Orthodox culture was following the Julian style until 1918, the date of the flood is given in older sources as November 7. 8 B. Schröder wrongly gives the year of the death of Christina Harnack as 1831, “Die Wissenschaft,” 152 and 169. 9 See Horst Garve, Konfession und Nationalität – Ein Beispiel zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Gesellschaft in Livland im 19. Jahrhundert (Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut, 1978); W. Kahle, “Die theologische Fakultät in Dorpat – Geschichte und Gegengeschichte,” Lutherische Kirche in der Welt – Jahrbuch des Martin-Luther-Bundes 29 (1982): 106–137.

258

Christoffer H. Grundmann

preacher, and with Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–1869), Lutheran editor of the influential antirationalistic Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, with whom he kept an active correspondence afterwards. Both Strauß and Hengstenberg were avid supporters of the Prussian church union of 1817. It was most probably through Strauß, who formerly was pastor in Elberfeld, that Harnack came in close contact with one of the leading figures of the revival movement in the Rhineland, Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher (1796–1868), a declared anti-rationalist, too, who promoted the interdenominational Evangelical Alliance. Even though he was a minister of the Reformed Church, he favored orthodox Lutheranism. Krummacher in 1841 edited two sermons by Theodosius Harnack “for a good cause”10 and helped him find a publisher for his first book, an exegetical study of Matthew 5:17.11 Finally, at Erlangen Harnack came to know Adolf von Harleß (1806–1879), who at that time was professor of systematic theology and the university preacher and with whom he would later publish a treatise on the ecclesial importance of the proper teaching of the means of grace, the Lord’s Supper in particular.12 Thus, during his postgraduate years, 1840–1842, Harnack not only got exposed to remarkable representatives of pious, reactionary anti-rationalism and to articulate advocates of Prussian church-unionism, which made an impression on him, but he also came to realize the importance of the church’s ministry and its public role. Returning to Dorpat in 1842 Harnack qualified himself for a professorship with a dissertation on the prologue of St. John’s Gospel,13 for which he received the venia legendi in 1843. Immediately thereafter, he was appointed a lecturer in practical theology at the same university. In the following years and under the influence of his dominant colleague, the systematic Lutheran theologian Friedrich Adolf/Adolph Philippi (1809–1882) 14, he gradually turned away from his former pious subjectivist indifference and consciously embraced Lutheranism. He especially appreciated the divine institution of the church, her ministry, and her decrees of faith, as is obvious in his 1845 edition of the normative creeds of 10 Theodosius Harnack, Alles und in allem Christus. Zwei Predigten. ed. F.W. Krummacher (Elberfeld: Hassel, 1841). 11 Jesus der Christ, oder der Erfüller des Gesetzes und der Prophetie: Ein biblisch-theologischer Versuch auf Grundlage von Ev. Matth. 5, 17 (Elberfeld: Hassel, 1842; reprint Amsterdam: Nabu Press, 2013). The manuscript was finished on Harnack’s twenty-fifth birthday, which he celebrated at Berlin, Jan. 3, 1842. See the “Foreword,” Jesus der Christ, oder der Erfüller des Gesetzes und der Prophetie, x. For the description of Harnack as a “reborn theologian,” see ibid., vii. 12 Adolf v. Harleß, Theodosius Harnack, Die kirchlich-religiöse Bedeutung der reinen Lehre von den Gnadenmitteln. Mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Abendmahl. Drei Abhandlungen (Erlangen: Deichert, 1869). 13 Commentationum in prologum evangelii secundum Joannem particular I. Continens brevem totius prologi conspectum et primi versus interpretationem (Dorpat: Schümann, 1843). 14 Merz gives his name wrongly as “August Philippi” in “Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung,” 339.

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

259

the Lutheran Church—the Apostolicum, the Nicaenum, the Athanasianum, and the Augsburg Confession—prefaced by an extended essay of 177 pages.15 In 1847 (Feb. [2] 14) he received Lutheran ordination and was promoted to full professor for practical theology at Dorpat. The following year he became the university preacher. While, according to his brother-in–law Alexander von Oettingen, his sermons were plain spoken, non-exciting, and somewhat doctrinal, “he was in his element” when celebrating the liturgy.16 Nonetheless, once he was academically established, he began to get actively involved in church affairs, too. He became the chair of the liturgical committee of his church in 1849 and advised the Synod on how to deal with the aggressive proselytization by the Russian Orthodox Church among Lutherans,17 as well as with the popular Moravian piety, which due to its emphasis on individual devotion cultivated an exclusivist sense of belonging, which posed a latent threat of separation within the Protestant community of Livonia. These circumstances made Harnack study the nature of the church more in-depth, a nature he found most appropriately articulated in Article VII of the Augsburg Confession.18 His study of the doctrine of the church led him some years later to renounce publicly his former attachment to the Moravian kind of piety with its indifference to church and ministry.19 It was during the revolutionary year 1848, too, that Harnack married Anna Carolina Maria von Ewers (called: Marie), eleven years his junior, daughter of the former President of Dorpat University, the late Gustav von Ewers (1779–1830), and sister of Bertha von Oettingen (1818–1913), second wife of his later colleague Alexander von Oettingen (1827–1905). The couple had one daughter Anna (1849–1868), and four sons: the twins Adolf (1851–1830; professor of Church history at Berlin) and Axel (1851–1888; professor of mathematics at Dresden), Erich (1852–1915; professor of pharmacology at Halle), and Otto (1857–1914; professor of literature at Stuttgart). Trying to be responsible parents and doing 15 Die Grundbekenntnisse der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche: Die drei ökumenischen Symbole und die Augsburgische Confession. Für die Glieder dieser Kirche, mit einer ausführlichen Einleitung und mit Anmerkungen herausgegeben (Dorpat: W. Gläser, 1845). 16 Oettingen, “Harnack, Theodosius,” in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 50:11 (my translation). 17 In 1836 the Russian Orthodox Church established a Bishopric at Riga, Latvia, and began an aggressive campaign to make the poor farmers join the church by promising material benefits, which they actually never enjoyed, making many consider return to their Lutheran origins. Yet by 1850 about 10 % of the 700,000 Livonian Lutherans became Russian Orthodox. (see Bernd Schröder, “Die Wissenschaft,“ 162). 18 His respective contribution “Wesen und Kennzeichen der wahren Kirche Jesu Christi” appeared in 1850 in Mittheilungen und Nachrichten für die evangelische Geistlichkeit Rußlands, 8, 4 (1850): 329–381. 19 Namely in his Die lutherische Kirche Livlands und die herrnhutische Brüdergemeinde. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte neuerer und neuester Zeit (Erlangen: Bläsing, 1860; originally published in two sections in: Kirchliche Zeitschrift 2 [1855]: 383ff; 4 [1857]: 549ff).

260

Christoffer H. Grundmann

the best for their children in raising them to become pious, God-fearing, wellbehaved and well-educated citizens who knew their duties and obeyed authority, the couple, particularly the father, whom one hardly ever saw laughing20, was very strict with them until the day they went off to university21, an upbringing which left its mark on his sons and certainly played a role in the conflict with Adolf, his oldest. This latter conflict heavily clouded the final years of Theodosius’ life. Sadly though, at the age of twenty-nine Marie died after having given birth to Otto at Erlangen, where the Harnacks had moved in 1853, a move which proved to be especially difficult for her. She tried to compensate the loss of her beloved Baltic home and stately way of life by regular weekly correspondence with her mother.22 Marie’s spiritual counsellor and Theodosius’ colleague, his fellow dogmatician Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875), conducted the funeral.23 Seriously committed to his task as Hausvater in the Lutheran sense, the grieving widower24 kept the fragmented family together. He himself took full care of his five underage children during the following seven years before remarrying (in 1864) a cousin of Marie, the Baltic noblewoman Baronesse Helene von Maydell (1834–1923). Harnack left his position at Dorpat in 1853, at the age of thirty-six, to heed a call to Erlangen as professor for practical theology in succession to Johann Wilhelm Friedrich Höfling (1802–1853). The Protestant theological faculty there was at that time—like Dorpat—an epicenter of neo-Lutheranism with an emphasis on the experiential dimension of Lutheran tenets.25 As the Lutherans in the Baltics represented a religious minority within an all-Russian Orthodox surrounding so did the Lutherans in Bavaria within an all-Roman Catholic en20 A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 32. 21 A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 39. – Von Oettingen quotes the father as saying, “They [i. e. the sons] must suffer a power above them to grow into mature men” (Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 14). 22 A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 17–18. 23 Zum Gedächtnis der Frau Maria Harnack geb. von Ewers, geboren zu Dorpat, den 22.(10.) Mai 1828, gestorben zu Erlangen, den 23.(11.) November [1857]: I. Begräbnisrede von Professor Dr. Thomasius; II. Einsegnung am Grabe, nach der Agende, vol. 6 of Erinnerungsreden und Nachrufe aus dem Verwandtenkreise des Professors D. Theodosius Harnack, Dorpat und Erlangen (Erlangen: Junge & Sohn, no year). 24 In the introduction to the first volume of Luthers Theologie of 1862 (bibliographical reference see below note 30) he mentioned (p. ix) that during the book’s writing he “suffered the most grief stricken time in his family life”, while in the introduction to the second volume, published in 1886, that is 29 years after Marie’s death (bibliographical reference see below note 30), he still spoke of “the great loss hitting me at Erlangen that paralyzed my energy for quite some time” (1). These remarks appear to be the only ones in all of his writings where the otherwise always composed author gives away something personal – and that is saying a lot. 25 See Matthew Becker, The Self-giving God and Salvation History (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 3–19; Lowell C. Green, The Erlangen School of Theology: History, Teaching, and Practice (Fort Wayne, IN: Lutheran Legacy, 2010); and Martin Hein, Lutherisches Bekenntnis und Erlanger Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn: 1984).

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

261

vironment. Both situations called for a conscious reappraisal of the distinctiveness of the Lutheran faith and its ecclesiology while also showing—like many other contemporaries—stern opposition to rationalism, liberalism, and emerging democracy for fear of the loss of good order which was seen to be warranted only by a strong, centralized, and absolute authority, politically as well as ecclesially. Agreeing on these issues in principle both faculties, the one at Dorpat and the one at Erlangen, showed a remarkable homogeneity among their teaching faculty, despite several internal and personal differences. Besides Thomasius, Harnack’s other colleagues at Erlangen were Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890), who taught Old Testament, Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810–1877), who taught exegesis of the New Testament and also dogmatics, and the church historian Heinrich Schmid (1811–1885). In his new position Harnack was tasked with eight hours of lectures a week and four hours of seminars for the practical training of candidates. Alongside liturgical studies26 he also helped establish the Institute for Church Music in 1854. Though it seems that he did not engage noticeably in local church activities while in Bavaria27, he certainly did so with regard to his Livonian home church, where he made his voice heard by publishing a firm rebuff of unionism.28 However, the main focus during his years at Erlangen was on Luther—not the least due to the insistence of his wife Marie29—culminating in the publication of the first volume of Luther’s Theology in 1862; the second volume followed almost a quarter of a century later.30 The other book that Harnack published in 1862 was Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, one of the few works of his to be 26 See Der christliche Gemeindeottesdienst im apostolischen und altkatholischen Zeitalter (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1854); Joh, Wilh. Friedr. Höfling, Liturgisches Urkundenbuch enthaltend die Akte der Communion, der Ordination und Introduction, und der Trauung, edited by Gottfried Thomasius and Theodosius Harnack (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1854); Tabellarische Übersicht über die Geschichte der Liturgie des christlichen Hauptgottesdienstes (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1858). 27 Merz’ statement that Harnack (while being at Erlangen) addressed pastors during conferences (“Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung,” 340) cannot be corroborated; see B. Schröder, “Die Wissenschaft,” 163, footnote 63. 28 “Die Union und ihr neuester Vertreter. Sendschreiben an Julius Müller,” Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, NF 28 (1854): 261–367; “Thesen über die Kirche, mit besonderer Bezugnahme auf die betreffenden Bestimmungen unserer symbolischen Bücher,” Dorpater Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 1 (1859): 335–376. 29 So according to von Oettingen in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 13. 30 Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versöhnungs- und Erlösungslehre. I. Abteilung: Luthers theologische Grundanschauungen (Erlangen: Th. Blaesing, 1862); Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versöhnungs- und Erlösungslehre. II. Abteilung: Luthers Lehre von dem Erlöser und der Erlösung (Erlangen: Th. Blaesing, 1886; reprints: München: Kaiser, 1927; Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1969). Besides his seminal study on Luther Harnack also published an annotated critical edition of the Small Catechism (Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers in seiner Urgestalt. Kritisch untersucht und herausgegeben [Stuttgart: Liesching, 1856]).

262

Christoffer H. Grundmann

reprinted in the twentieth century and which showed him to have grown substantially in his awareness of Lutheran confessional theology.31 When he left Erlangen in 1866 to succeed Arnold F. Christiani (1807–1886) as professor of practical theology at Dorpat, Harnack had been head of the faculty of theology at Erlangen three times, which tells how much he was appreciated by his colleagues. Back at Dorpat Harnack again joined a faculty of conscious Lutherans, which consisted of his brother-in–law Alexander von Oettingen, who taught dogmatics, the church historian Moritz Freiherr von Engelhardt (1828–1881), Wilhelm Volck (1835–1904), who taught Semitic languages and exegesis of the Old Testament, Johann H. Kurtz (1809–1890) and Ferdinand Mühlau (1839–1914), who both taught New Testament. Von Engelhardt, von Oettingen, and Volck had studied with von Hofmann at Erlangen. With a wife again at his side to look after the now teenaged children, who all had to learn Russian in order to continue their schooling in Livonia, Harnack resumed liturgical studies to aid and advise not only his home church on the revision of their liturgy and order of service32, but also other churches.33 In 1870, one year before Bismarck succeeded in uniting German duchies, territories, and regions to form the German Empire, Harnack contributed to the raving discussion among confessional Lutherans and advocates of church unionism about the way the Protestant Church should be organized in the emerging unified state. He authored a dispassionate proposal for a constitutional structure of the Lutheran Church as a church for the entirety of the people (Volkskirche) but independent of state government34, a suggestion considered by some to be the ultimate, magisterial word on the topic.35

31 Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment: grundlegende Sätze mit durchgehender Bezugnahme auf die symbolischen Bücher der lutherischen Kirche, zur Prüfung und Verständigung hinausgegeben (Nürnberg: Sebald; reprints were made by Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, in 1934, 1947, and 1964). 32 See his contributions “Beiträge zur Revision und Vervollständigung unserer Agende,” Dorpater Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 13 (1871): 189ff., 476ff., and Liturgische Formulare. Zur Vervollständigung und Revision der Agende für die evangelisch-lutherische Kirche im russischen Reiche, Th. Harnack, ed., 1: Taufe und Confirmation (1871), 2: Trauung, Krankencommunion, Einsegnung der Sterbenden, Begräbnis (1874), 3: Hauptgottesdienst und Nebengottesdienste (1878), all Dorpat: W. Gläser; Hilfsbuch zum evangelisch-lutherischen Gesangbuch für Kirche, Schule und Haus (Riga und Mitau 1881) (Dorpat: E. Mattiesen, 1883). 33 At Erlangen Harnack produced an expertise for the Lutheran Church in Prussia on request of the Consistory at Breslau (Theologisches Gutachten über das Corpus der Synodalbeschlüsse der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche in Preußen [Erlangen: Deichert, 1863]). At Dorpat he gave his expertise of the draft agenda for the Lutheran Church in Saxony (Beurtheilung des Entwurfs einer Agende für die evangelisch-lutherische Kirche des Königreichs Sachsen [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1879]). 34 Die freie lutherische Volkskirche. Der lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands zur Prüfung und Verständigung vorgelegt (Dorpat: Deichert; reprint: Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2011). 35 So G. Merz, “Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung,” 342. See also M. Doerne, “Der Weg zur wirklichen Gemeinde,” passim.

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

263

In 1875, at the age of 59, Harnack suffered a stroke which left him impaired and weak. Ultimately it forced him into early retirement three years later. However, he neither gave up his academic pursuits, nor did he stop actively participating in church affairs. He wrote a brief essay that addressed the at times heated discussion in the Baltic Protestant church about the inerrancy of Scripture and the biblical canon with the explicit intention of mediating between the opposing views.36 Two years later, in 1877/1878 he published the voluminous Practical Theology37, and in 1882 a less sizeable Catechesis and Explanation of Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism.38 He also contributed three major articles on liturgy, pastoral ministry, and congregational stewardship to an encyclopedic dictionary of theology which appeared in 1883.39 Finally, in 1886 he was able to complete the second volume of his opus magnum on Luther’s theology in which he deals with Luther’s perception of the Savior and of salvation, a fitting conclusion for a body of work by a passionate theologian whose first publication forty four years ago dealt with “Jesus the Christ.” Harnack’s years at Dorpat were not free of personal tragedy, apart from the impairments caused by the stroke. Already in 1868 he had to grieve the death of his daughter Anna, who died of pneumonia at age nineteen. Twenty years later, in 1888, Axel, one of the twins, died of tuberculosis. In his last years Theodosius Harnack was heavily burdened by the severe conflict with his son, Adolf, a painful conflict which touched upon matters of basic theological conviction and personal consciousness. Not only was Adolf married to a Roman Catholic, Amalie Thiersch (on August 2, 1879), but his historically well-informed and brilliant intellectual approach to Christian doctrines gave his father much cause for concern. “Christianity and its church is a much too serious matter,” he wrote his son. “It claims the entire being of a person, including intellect and knowledge … not tolerating any kind of half-heartedness.” A theologian’s “vantage point has to 36 Über den Kanon und die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift. Ein Wort zum Frieden (Dorpat: E.J. Karow, 1885). 37 Four parts in two volumes of together about one thousand pages: Praktische Theologie I (Erlangen: Deichert, 1877); Praktische Theologie II (Erlangen: Deichert, 1878). 38 Katechetik und Erklärung des kleinen Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers. vol. 1: Katechetik; vol. 2: Erklärung des kleinen Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers (Erlangen: Deichert, 1882). This publication was meant to complement Practical Theology and was well received by the pastors of the Baltic church. 39 Namely in Otto Zöckler, ed., Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften in encyclopädischer Darstellung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der einzelnen Disziplinen (Nördlingen/München: C.H.Beck; 3rd ed., 1890), vol. 4. See also Edward T. Horn, Outlines [!] of Liturgics on the Basis of Harnack in Zöckler’s ‘Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften’. Englished [sic] with additions from other sources (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1890); Timothy C.J. Quill, An Examination of the Contributions of Theodosius Harnack to the Renewal of the Lutheran Liturgy in the Nineteenth Century, unpublished PhD thesis (Madison, NJ: Drew University, 2002).

264

Christoffer H. Grundmann

be the church,” not “his little [grasp of] Christianity … proudly displaying the peacock’s plumage of his knowledge.”40 The conflict came to a head when the first volume of Adolf ’s History of Dogma appeared in 1886.41 Celebrated by liberals as an outstanding contribution to theological scholarship but rejected by conservatives as putting human reason beyond and above faith, for the father Adolf ’s historic-critical approach and rational explanation of the “objective truths” of faith were a frightening attack on the fundamentals of Christianity and the teachings of the church. Consequently, he did not write his son for some time and begged his colleagues at Dorpat never to mention his son’s book to him. When at long last he finally did write to Adolf he told him, “Our difference is not of a theological nature, but one which goes much deeper, it is a direct Christian one which, if I were to ignore it, would mean to deny Christ which nobody can demand of me, even if he would be as close to me as you are, my son. Whoever does view the fact of the resurrection like you … is in my eyes a Christian theologian no longer.”42 Tragically though, father and son could not resolve this conflict. Theodosius died at Dorpat on September [11] 23, 1889, aged seventytwo, while his son was pursuing studies in southern Italy and thus could not attend the funeral.43 However, late in his life Adolf, who hardly ever disclosed his feelings about this conflict to anyone, made a surprising statement which may well be taken as a sign of genuine and honest reconciliation with his deceased father after some thirty years. When on May 7, 1929, he was honored by having the newly built Berlin guesthouse for international scholars and scientists of the then Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (now: Max Planck Gesellschaft) 44 named after him—he was the first President of the Gesellschaft—, Adolf (now: von Harnack) said, Finally I have to give thanks that this house has been given my name. … Almost eighty years ago my father was one of the first, who was called as professor from Dorpat to Germany … My father, thus, did commence the exchange to and fro between my homecountry [Livonia] and Germany and his sons continued this besides others. Now, since you had been so gracious to name this building Harnack-Haus, permit me to call to mind an earlier bearer of the name, my father.45

40 A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 130 (my translation). 41 Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 1 (Freiburg, i. Br.: Mohr, 1886; [English: History of Dogma, translated from the 3rd German ed., Boston: Little, 1901]). 42 Letter of January 29, 1886, as quoted in A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 143 (my translation). 43 Letter of January 29, 1886, as quoted in A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 291 (my translation). 44 For current activities of the “Harnack House” see URL http://www.harnackhaus-berlin.mpg. de/2316/en. 45 A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 557 (my translation).

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

265

Theological Emphases Harnack’s theological reflection gravitated around the church and her ministry. His hermeneutical key was a pietistic, biblically-rooted, confessional Lutheranism as he experienced it first in his Baltic home context and later honed at Erlangen but which he finally left behind after his in-depth study of Luther and the Lutheran confessional documents. Thus, Theodosius Harnack cannot be claimed to be a confessional Lutheran in the conventional sense. Rather, he distinctively maintained an independent position within nineteenth-century confessional Lutheranism46 which might be one of the reasons why he did not find—at least not until now—as much of a hearing as his peers did.

1. Harnack on the Church The bulk of Harnack’s literary output deals with the church, chiefly with her liturgy, her constitution, and her various ministrations. His signature and most comprehensive publication on the topic is the Practical Theology (Praktische Theologie), which appeared in two volumes in 1877/1878, complemented four years later by his Catechesis (Katechetik und Erklärung des Kleinen Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers). Earlier he authored two smaller books on statutory aspects of church organization along the lines of the Lutheran confessional documents (Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment [1862]; Die freie lutherische Volkskirche [1870]). All of these writings are marked by a strict systematic approach which unfolds a carefully crafted, sometimes highly complex argument, in an irenic tone, with a clear focus on original sources. Opinionated polemics are almost completely absent. Central to Harnack’s understanding of the church, in pronounced dissociation from other ecclesiological concepts at the time,47 is his distinction between church and “churchdom” (Kirchent[h]um), as he called it. “The church 46 For Harnack’s self-perception as a theologian of the church claiming to think independently of any confessional party-line see his postscript in: G. Thomasius, Das Bekenntniß der lutherischen Kirche von der Versöhnung und die Versöhnungslehre D.Chr.K. v. Hofmann’s. Mit einem Nachwort von D.Th. Harnack (Erlangen: Bläsing, 1857), 114–120; 125. 47 Opposing ecclesiological concepts were suggested by those favoring church unionism or Roman Catholicism but also by Lutherans like W. Löhe and Stahl with their emphasis on the ordained ministry or Höfling and others giving prominence to the spiritual dimension of the Church; see B. Schröder, “Die Wissenschaft der sich selbst erbauenden Kirche,” 185; G. Merz, “Theodosius Harnacks Bedeutung,” 340–342. – On the topic in general see Heinrich Wittram, Die Kirche bei Theodosius Harnack. Ekklesiologie und Praktische Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963).

266

Christoffer H. Grundmann

is part of the Creed, an article of faith,” whereas “churchdom is not.”48 Basing this distinction on the Apostolic and Nicene Creeds—Credo … Unam, Sanctam, Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesia, Sanctorum Communionem—as well as on the Apology of CA VII—the “golden article,” the “core of the Lutheran church and theology”49—he defined “churchdom” as “the church in her empirical shape and appearance, in the forms of her cult and life … and her organizational structure … as expressed in specific liturgical formulas, church orders, and laws.”50 Synonymously he also employed the distinctions between “the essential church” (wesentliche Kirche) and “the empirical church” (empirische Kirche) and also between “the everlasting church” (die in allen Zeiten sich gleich bleibende Kirche) and “the historically manifest church” (die geschichtlich formierte Kirche) in order to indicate a theologically critical difference not captured by the distinction between “visible” and “invisible Church” common in ecclesiological discussions. “The essential church” has “visible elements”—word, sacraments, congregations—whereas the “empirical church has an invisible side to it” as well, which is “faith or unbelief, superstition, heresy, or hypocrisy.”51 God did not give the Church “ordained forms” for her actual organization but only “godly norms, gifts, and directives.” All church orders and liturgies, even the wordings of the confessional statements, are therefore to be regarded as contingent, always manmade, changeable, and in need of reforms, the yardstick for which has to be the church of the Creed.52 Such relativizing of the empirical appearance of the church and her actual organizational composition allowed for a remarkable critical freedom over against all legalistic, ministerial, spiritualistic, and confessional concepts of the church entertained by his contemporaries. Unlike any of his other colleagues Harnack defines the church first and foremost as a work of Christ. His ecclesiology, thus, is moored in Christology and informed by Luther. Coming into being on Pentecost as a result of the risen Christ pouring out the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, the church represents the earthly form of the kingdom of God in its present phase as the reign of Christ, his body, until his coming again at the end of times. The church as the eschatologically oriented reign of Christ becomes manifest in the congregation of believers where Christ, the Word of God, is preached and the sacraments are distributed. As such the church is never an instrument of a worldly agency or a legally codified institute, though the church will always have also a legal and organizational 48 So programmatically stated in the defining first paragraph of Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment (1862), 1. 49 Praktische Theologie I, 74 (my translation). 50 Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, 54 (par. 102) (my translation). 51 Praktische Theologie I, 84 (my translation); see also Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, 37 (par. 68). 52 Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, 66 (par. 120) (my translation).

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

267

structure. However, the church is a truly objective means, spiritual in character,53 which, as we might describe it, participates in her very being in the two natures of Christ. This very being of the church, therefore, does not allow a division between the eternal and the temporal, the worldly and the celestial, even though these realms might be discerned as such. However, the empirical church is church, not perfect, of course, but yet the church “becoming a realization of Christ’s reign of grace” (obschon wahre, so doch nicht vollendete, sondern werdende Verwirklichung des Gnadenreiches Christi).54 Due to such intimate interpenetration of the two realms it becomes impossible to draw a clear-cut line between the “appearance” (Erscheinung) and the “essence” (Wesen) of the church. One simply has to trust God’s promise that wherever the empirical church is, the essential church is there, too, because it is only there—and not anywhere else— that one finds the means of grace, word and sacraments, by which alone faith comes about and finds its sustenance. It is in this way, too, that the church retains her character as an agency of faith, while at the same time proving that the essential church is not an abstract phenomenon but is tangibly present in the world. Harnack further points to the fact that faith never remains unarticulated. Faith constantly finds expression in articulated formulas and in particular confessions of faith. Since the Lutheran confession contains “the apostolic truth in all its purity and clarity,” it is for Harnack “the truly catholic one” and the really “unifying bond of the church”55, even though the concrete, actual wording of the confession is man-made and belongs to churchdom. Confessionalism should never become an idolatry, he warns.56 Yet, the empirical church is and remains rooted in the essential church by faith and creed; it is not otherwise. Without creed the empirical church loses her orientation and her ecclesial character, that is, she cannot any longer claim to be church.57 The church is always the confessional church. The articulated faith of the Creed as expressed in the confessional documents gives a particular shape to the church’s ministry and also her liturgy, Harnack’s preferred subject of study. Albeit neither Creed nor ministry are counted among the essential signs of the church (notae ecclesiae), yet they are nonetheless important for the proper functioning of the church and cannot simply be discarded, an argument directed against pietistic attempts to dislodge ordained ministry and public church service, as promoted by the Herrnhuts in Livonia during Harnack’s time. While there is merit in private devotion and Bible study, private 53 54 55 56 57

See Praktische Theologie I, 64–84. Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, 31 (par. 58); original emphasis (my translation). Praktische Theologie I, 151 (my translation). Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 24. Praktische Theologie I, 177–199.

268

Christoffer H. Grundmann

initiatives can never replace the ministry of the church as instituted by God. The church’s celebration of services with their elaborate liturgy represents “the center and climax of the congregation’s self-edification”58 since they again and again reveal the true relationship between the church and Christ. Critics have noticed that Harnack’s terminology regarding the church and churchdom, the essential church and the empirical church, the everlasting church and the church as historically manifest is sometimes contradictory and remains opaque. They accuse him of not really mastering the challenges and of being deficient in the level of his reflection.59 It is true that Harnack only describes the differences and interpenetrations of the dyads mentioned above without making a case how best to handle the tensions existing between them. However, it might well be that Harnack in his particular way of ecclesiological reflection intended— not by explicit expression but implicitly—to point to the ultimately mysterious character of the church which actually is beyond terminological definition, an idea not too farfetched for someone who was a conscious confessional theologian, viz. someone who knows how to differentiate substance and form … but not so as to pull them apart so that substance is no longer free of form but completely formless … and merely theoretical … assuming nevertheless that the substance’s content still can be found, identified, and reproduced.60

Be this as it may, with regard to the actual structure to be given to the Lutheran Church in the emerging Germany of 1870/1871, Harnack was anything but unclear about what to do. Realizing that the former way of organizing the Lutheran Church as territories that were tied to regional governments (with entire populations being baptized in only one confessional church) was not going to work in the new nation, where regional rulers had little to say, he drew up a scheme for how the Lutheran Church might get organized as a free, independent confessional Church, yet still be a church for all the people (Volkskirche).61 In referring to the early church’s practice of separating the catechumens from the confessed believers, he suggested that people ought to discern two congregations within the church, namely the “congregation of all the baptized” (Taufgemeinde) and the “congregation of all those who share in the Lord’s Supper” (Abend58 Praktische Theologie I, 217 (my translation); see also 53. 59 See for instance Volker Drehsen, “Konfessionalistische Kirchentheologie – Theodosius Harnack 1816[sic]–1889,” in Profile des neuzeitlichen Protestantismus, ed. F.W. Graf, vol. 2, part 1 (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1992), 170–174. See also B. Schröder, “Die Wissenschaft,” 185– 187. For the same charge regarding his Luther studies see Otto Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938), 107–112. 60 Postscript in: G. Thomasius, Das Bekenntniß der lutherischen Kirche, 119–120 (my translation). 61 Namely in his Die freie lutherische Volkskirche of 1870.

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

269

mahlsgmeinde). Both congregations are church; indeed, they form concentric circles around Christ, their one and only center. Their relationship is not constituted as a hierarchical or elitist one, for “[t]he church is never to forget that her Lord did institute the meal for the weak and weary. When making conditions for participation in it [i. e. the Eucharist] the church is not to be guided by considerations or concerns which are not firmly embedded in the meal’s institution or which cannot be justified by it.”62 Without disrespect for those belonging to the congregation of the baptized—the empirical church is and remains a corpus permixtum after all—Harnack nonetheless insists that such a distinction is important since it is the Eucharistic congregation which will make more clearly visible to the world what the church is meant to be about, a “congregation of believers and saints,”63 not perfect, of course, but representative, while at the same time presenting the church of the Word and faith as actual reality. The relationship between the two congregations has therefore to be understood as a dialectical one with the inner circle representing those honestly and freely desiring to be church, eager to live a holy, genuinely Christian life which, then, people at large will notice as such and want to emulate. To get there Harnack recommends a radical reorganization of the church’s catechesis and praxis of confirmation. Confirmation should no longer mark the formal conclusion of children’s catechesis. Confirmation, rather, should be an act of confession and commission at the end of a supplementary catechesis by those who have freely asked for it, driven only by their genuine and authentic desire to become true, confessing members of the church, which according to Harnack would be everyone who “knows the popular belief of the church,” namely “Luther’s Small Catechism” and who “really appreciates and confesses it.”64 Thus, being a congregation of believing confessors (Gemeinde des Glaubens) and an institute for faith (Anstalt für den Glauben) 65 the Lutheran Church represents the church as a confessional church in both her vital aspects, her life in Christ and in her mission to the world.

2. Harnack on Luther The study of Luther’s theology was a lifelong pursuit of Harnack, not merely as an academic exercise but as an authentic existential quest of ultimate personal importance which was carried out with outmost sincerity.66 Raised in a religious 62 63 64 65 66

Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 131 (my translation). Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 138 (my translation). Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 129 (my translation). Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 110 (my translation). See Harnack, “Vorwort” in: Luthers Theologie, 2:1, 17–18.

270

Christoffer H. Grundmann

minority situation he became conscious of his confessional heritage and identity from an early age. His pietistic upbringing instilled in him an unshakable belief in the ultimate authority of Scripture and a sincere personal devoutness enabling him to cultivate an articulate Lutheranism. After becoming a faculty member at Dorpat, charged with the responsibility to participate in the education of future clergy for the Lutheran Church and having colleagues like Adolf Philippi at his side, Harnack intensively studied the original sources, the confessional documents, and Luther in particular. In 1845 he published Die Grundbekenntnisse der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, which then was followed by a text-critical edition of Luther’s Small Catechism (Der kleine Katechismus Martin Luthers in seiner Urgestalt kritisch untersucht und herausgegeben) in 1856, and in 1862 by the first volume of Luthers Theologie. The fourth centenary of Luther’s birthday (1883) became the stimulus, finally, to complete this ambitious project twentyfour years later in 1886.67 The main textual source Harnack relied on was the edition of Luther’s works by Walch, quite popular then but not reliable68, though he was also familiar with the Erlangen editions.69 The Weimarana, begun in 1883, was not at his disposal.70 His remarkably meticulous, erudite work, notably its numerous quotations are, therefore, somewhat obscured by not being as accurate as he wished them to be.71 His uncritical, ahistorical, and very liberal way of arranging citations has been noted as yet one other reason for concluding that his monograph has inter alia distorted certain aspects of Luther’s theology, like the concept of predestination and that of the free will.72 Harnack, however, had declared at the outset that he was not interested in researching the historical development of Luther’s theological thinking. His intention, rather, was—typical of a Romanticist—to portray the core of Luther’s theology along “dogmatic-systematic” lines so as to show “as exhaustively as possible” the “marvelously deep and awesome views of Luther,

67 The explicit reference to the event is made in “Vorwort,” Luthers Theologie, 2:1. 68 See Harnack, “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, I:X; “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, 2:18. – The Walch edition appeared in Halle: Gebauer, 1740–1753. 69 German writings: 1st ed. (Erlangen: Heyder, 1826–1857); 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Heyder & Zimmer, 1862–1885); Latin writings (Erlangen: Heyder, 1829–1886). – References made to this edition see “Vorwort” in: Luthers Theologie I:x. 70 See Harnack, “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, 2:1. The project finished in 2009, after 126 years and 121 volumes. 71 See V. Drehsen, “Konfessionalistische Kirchentheologie,” 66–67. –The editors of the reprint of 1927 tried to remedy this somewhat by appending a “Table of References” to each volume, see 1:463–546; 2:383–464. 72 See f. i. B. Lohse, Martin Luther, 220–221; V. Drehsen, “Konfessionalistische Kirchentheologie,” 67; W.F. Schmidt, “Vorbemerkung,” in Theodosius Harnack, Luthers Theologie, I (München: Kaiser, 1927), v; O. Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung, 81–112.

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

271

the only one after the Apostles, … in the context in which these lived in him.”73 Limitations notwithstanding, Harnack managed to write the first ever comprehensive examination of the Reformer’s theology, a feat which secures him a permanent place in the hall of fame of Luther studies. For Harnack Luther was one of those great, outstanding personalities who, because they absorbed all what has been healthy in the past were thereby enabled and empowered to initiate a new epoch by means of the novel and personal in what they contributed.74

Although acknowledging that “Luther is not a man of systems” Harnack did interpret Luther with an explicitly systematic approach taken from the Reformer’s own writings and regarded by Harnack to be “the center of his [i. e. Luther’s] faith and teaching, viz. … reconciliation and salvation”.75 This focus he applied strictly throughout by corroborating his conclusions with thousands of actual Luther quotations. The result is a powerful homogenous presentation of Luther’s theology, save the difficulties of integrating De servo arbitrio into the picture.76 Luther’s theological reflection is characterized by Harnack as “an act of faith”77, as “reflection of faith realized” and as a “resolute thinking from within the revelation” of God in Christ.78 As such Luther only knows of “God and the world outside Christ” (Gott und die Welt außer Christo) and “God and the world in Christ” (Gott und die Welt in Christo).79 This Christocentric distinction, Harnack maintains, is “the principium movens of” Luther’s theological dialectic of believing” (das principium movens seiner theologischen Glaubensdialektik).80 Consequently, it is God and world “outside Christ” or “in Christ” respectively which provides—in Harnack’s eyes—the all decisive categorical grid for Luther’s theology, for his distinguishing God’s wrath from God’s love, law from gospel, sin from grace, deus absconditus from deus revelatus, the Creator from the Redeemer, damnation from salvation and so forth. These opposites, however, Harnack explains, are not idle, abstract concepts. They reflect actual realities of radical tensions painfully experienced and endured by Luther, who was able to keep the mutually exclusive and radically contradicting aspects of God together, 73 Harnack, “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, I:ix (my translation). See also “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, 2:18. 74 Harnack, “Vorwort” in Luthers Theologie, 2:18 (my translation). 75 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:ix. 76 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:113–190. 77 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:336. 78 O. Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung, 69. 79 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:193–274 (chapters four through six), and 1:277–362 (chapters seven through nine). 80 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:104.

272

Christoffer H. Grundmann

thanks to his firm, confident believing in the Christ pro me. The discovery of this very dialectic in Luther is the original contribution Harnack made to Luther studies, which sets him apart from monistic interpretations by peers like von Hofmann, Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), and several others.81

Conclusion Theodosius Harnack occupies a unique and distinctive place among Lutheran theologians of the nineteenth century. Exposed to pietist-revivalist influences (Goßner; Herrnhut; Krummacher) as well as to confessional Lutheranism (Harleß; Thomasius; Philippi), he most appropriately can be described as an articulated pious confessional Lutheran who kept his theological independence in thinking and reflecting about the church and her ministry. Harnack did so, not out of a desire to be original and recognizable as a distinct individual who cultivated a strong ego. Harnack’s theological independence, rather, was a direct consequence of his understanding of how to do theology as a believing theologian of the church who enjoys the freedom of being bound by truth only, the truth as revealed in Scripture, confessed in the Creeds, and safeguarded by the confessional documents. The ideal role model and tutor for him in this regard was Luther, whose “teaching was deeply rooted in his personality and life, yet, while independent and original, was in close contact with the church and her historical development.”82 Doing theology as a theologian of the church means enjoying the freedom of theologizing bound by truth alone, daring to break new ground and open up new avenues for thought. At the same time it requires self-denial and the humility to be willing, if need be, “to reshape one’s own work in order to align it with the statements of faith, even if this implies sacrificing a lot.”83 This was the way in which Harnack actually did teach and write himself. He did not step outside the bounds of the church and the Lutheran confession, because, according to him, outside the church there is no church, no gospel, and no grace; outside the church there is no theology to do either. Christian theologians, therefore, can never sever their ties to the church; otherwise they transform theology into a mere abstract, intellectual exercise and turn it into something else than what theology is expected to do, namely to serve in the edification of the church. Theology under81 For Hofmann’s interpretation of Luther’s Christology, see Becker, The Self-giving God and Salvation History, 173–203. See also O. Wolff, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung, 9– 62, 121–263. 82 Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 1:3 (my translation). 83 Harnack, “Nachwort” to Thomasius’ Bekenntniß der lutherischen Kirchevon der Versöhnung, 118 (my translation).

Theodosius Andreas Harnack (1817–1889)

273

stood as a particular way of philosophical or cultural thinking not only alienates theology from its sources; actually, such way of theologizing actively destroys the church as well as Christendom, as Harnack held to be the case with what his son Adolf and A. Ritschl were practicing.84 “To be rooted in the confession, truly and firm as a Christian as well as a theologian,” Harnack declared, “not only means to confess what the church confesses, but to confess it the way how she confesses, viz. in the spirit and faith of the church.”85 Every theologian, therefore, has to respect the overall frame of reference of the statements of faith in the creeds as well as the actual idiom given to particular truths expressed therein as explained by the confessional documents. However, it is vitally important to distinguish between these two clearly, because our [i. e. Lutheran] Church and theology has never … to forget that her confessional documents carry God’s treasure in a fragile human vessel only.86 Since “they [i. e. the confessional documents] are not the light itself, but only its earthen sconce” the church, the Lutheran in particular has to withstand the temptation to turn her confessional documents into idols, into the slightest shade of an idol, if otherwise her confessional formulas might finally have to be destroyed as happened once to Israel when Hiskia had to demolish the brazen snake so that the people did not sacrifice to it any longer.87

With phrases like these Harnack powerfully documents his truly astonishing freedom and independence over against his peers, many of which eagerly wanted to established new norms for what the church should be—confessional, unionistic, liberal, pietistic, hierarchical, ministerial. He charted a way out of the jungle of all such well-intended suggestions by reorienting the discussion to the sources of faith: Scripture, the creeds, the Lutheran confessional documents. But unlike Neo-Lutherans or Lutheran confessionalists he did not simply repristinate or re-interpret these sources; he, instead, re-appropriated the sources as documents of faith in an authentic and genuine manner, personally believing in what Scripture, the creeds, and the confessional documents were saying. Theodosius Harnack’s peculiar, sometimes highly complex but always dynamic way of doing theology is characterized by his consciously acknowledged personal faith which he critically reflected in light of the lived tradition of faith of his Lutheran Church. While many critics charge him with entertaining a conservative, backward84 For his elaborate critique of Ritshl see Harnack, Luthers Theologie, 2:1–19; and also A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack, 129–131. 85 Harnack, “Nachwort” to Thomasius’ Bekenntniß der lutherischen Kirche von der Versöhnung, 119; original emphasis (my translation). 86 Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 24 (my translation). 87 Harnack, Die freie lutherische Volkskirche, 24 (my translation). (Reference is made to 2 Kings 18:4).

274

Christoffer H. Grundmann

looking attitude, ignorant of actual challenges, and, consequently, declare much of his theology as outdated, Harnack’s way of theologizing certainly is not; it, rather, remains an enduring challenge.

Darrell Jodock

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

Albrecht Ritschl was born on March 25, 1822. His father, George Carl Benjamin Ritschl, was a pastor and an advocate for the Prussian Union of Reformed and Lutheran churches, who served as the Bishop of the Protestant Church and General Superintendent of the churches in Pomerania (1827–54). Albrecht was educated at Bonn, Halle, and Tübingen. From 1846 to 1864 he taught at the University of Bonn, and from 1864 to his death in 1889 at the University of Göttingen. His research and teaching ranged across biblical studies, the history of theology, and constructive theology.

Ritschl as a Lutheran Theologian The series of which this article is a part is dedicated to Lutheran theologians from the nineteenth century. It is worth asking, should Ritschl be considered a Lutheran theologian? Some, especially those with neo-confessionalist leanings, are likely to say “no,” because he continued in his father’s footsteps and favored the Union (of Calvinists and Lutherans). In support of his positions he often appealed to “the Reformers” rather than the Confessions. Included in “the Reformers” were Luther and Calvin and sometimes also Zwingli. Other interpreters are likely to answer the question with a “yes.” In support of their answer, they cite his vocational purpose of appropriating, explaining, and continuing the dynamic, gospel-centered, experience-oriented theology of the young Luther. Ritschl included the other Reformers in his citations because he was convinced that they had inherited and affirmed the main themes found in Luther. To be sure, those themes were not perfectly absorbed, just as they were not perfectly continued in Luther’s later writings or among his followers, but to the degree to which Calvin and Zwingli were included in “the Reformers” it was because they followed Luther. The interpreters who answer “yes” would also point out that those most influenced by his thought were attracted to him in large part because he led them

276

Darrell Jodock

to Luther. Unlike the other theological parties in Germany at the time, who relied on sixteenth-century confessional documents not penned by Luther and on summaries of Luther’s thought formulated by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century orthodox theologians, Ritschl invited his students and followers to examine Luther directly. In addition, the interpreters who answer “yes” would cite Ritschl’s influence on the Luther Renaissance. Some of those who learned from Ritschl—most notably Karl Holl—quickly expanded the sources available for study. As David Lotz observes, Within twenty years of Ritschl’s death, research into the young Luther had been revolutionized by manuscript discoveries of Luther’s earliest biblical lectures (1513–18).1

These included lectures on the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. Ritschl’s influence was a major factor in generating and advancing the Luther Renaissance. The significance of Ritschl’s identification with a merged Lutheran-Calvinist church should not be overlooked completely, but the centrality of appeals to Luther in his theology makes it appropriate to consider him a Lutheran thinker. If “Lutheran” means endorsing Martin Luther’s priorities, with room for a critical appropriation of those ideas in the light of a significantly changed context, then Ritschl can clearly be considered a Lutheran theologian.

Ritschl as a Theologian During the early part of the twentieth century, some questioned whether Ritschl was a significant theologian. The most famous dismissal occurred in Karl Barth’s Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl. In a brief concluding chapter, Barth dismissed Ritschl as “an episode in more recent theology, and not, indeed, that of an epoch.”2 He stands with incredible clearness and firmness (truly with both feet) upon the ground of his ‘ideal of life,’ the very epitome of the national-liberal German bourgeois of the age of Bismarck.3

1 David Lotz, Ritschl and Luther: A Fresh Perspective on Albrecht Ritschl’s Theology in the Light of His Luther Study (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974), 95. 2 Karl Barth, Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl, trans. Brian Cozens (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 390. 3 Barth, Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl, 392.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

277

Although in quite remarkable ways this comment obscured the significant continuity that linked Barth’s thought to Ritschl’s,4 similar assessments were echoed by other neo-orthodox thinkers during the period following World War I. What was at stake in this assessment? World War I delivered a major jolt to European intellectual life. Barth and others looked back at Ritschl across this cultural divide. In their eyes, Ritschl seemed too comfortable with Bismarck’s Germany, which for them represented a tragedy-in the-making. It is true that, as a relatively young man, Ritschl had worked for the unification of Germany and was therefore predisposed to appreciate its arrival and to support Bismarck’s relatively liberal social policy (such as a social security program). But this does not mean he was uncritical of the Second Empire or identified Germany with the kingdom of God. Also, what had developed between Ritschl’s context and Barth’s was a new awareness of the systemic dimensions of social ills. Shaped by a different era, Ritschl had not undertaken this kind of analysis. Much of Ritschl’s ethical advice was directed at individuals and faith communities. In the face of suffering, he counseled patience and humility alongside of trust and action. To be sure, he wanted believers to appreciate how much the kingdom of God transcended their social boundaries, but he did little to critique the structures of society. In the eyes of theologians at work after WWI, he looked bourgeois. The context had changed, and in their assessments of Ritschl, the twentieth-century critics had difficulty acknowledging with sufficient seriousness the implications of this shift in outlook. Karl Barth and other neo-orthodox theologians saw a sharp break between nineteenth-century theology and their own approach. Viewed from today’s perspective, there are far more continuities between Ritschl and the neo-orthodox than there are discontinuities. In ways that Barth was unable to see from his vantage point in history, Ritschl did inaugurate an epoch in modern theology, an epoch that includes Barth himself. So, was Ritschl an important theologian? Before answering this question, it may be important to acknowledge an obstacle: Ritschl’s theology is not easily accessible. His writings can be difficult to follow because he is usually in conversation with the ideas of others; hence, uncovering the full import of what he is proposing requires diligence and some knowledge of other theologians. His language is often abstract. Even though his 4 Note David Lotz’s comment: “It is striking, indeed, that in the half-century after Ritschl’s death the Protestant dogmatician who most nearly replicated Ritschl’s conservative ‘theology of revelation,’—Bible-based, oriented to the Reformation tradition, Christ-and-church-centered, antispeculative, antimystical, and antipietistic—was none other than Karl Barth!” David Lotz, “Ritschl in His Nineteenth-Century Setting,” in Ritschl in Retrospect: History, Community, and Science, ed. Darrell Jodock (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 22.

278

Darrell Jodock

magnum opus, Justification and Reconciliation, extends to three thick volumes, it is not a comprehensive theology, but a treatment of one doctrine, from an historical, a biblical, and a constructive point of view. Volumes one and three have long been available in English, but a translation of volume two (covering the biblical material) has never been published. Ritschl’s one attempt to provide a summary for students, Instruction in the Christian Religion, can easily mislead the casual reader. By itself, it does not function well as an adequate overview. It needs to be understood in relation to his other writings. What has helped overcome the difficulty of access is a number of high-quality descriptions of Ritschl’s theology that have been published during the last half-century.5 Back to the question whether Ritschl was an important theologian. Those who incline toward answering that question with a “no” do so because much of Ritschl’s research and lecturing and writing was devoted to historical study. Except for the third volume of Justification and Reconciliation6 and Instruction in the Christian Religion,7 Ritschl was usually giving his attention to the past. What should not be overlooked, however, is his commitment to historical theology—a commitment he learned from Ferdinand Christian Baur, who had in turn appropriated the basic idea from Friedrich Schleiermacher and then developed it far more carefully and extensively than the latter ever attempted. As Schleiermacher had claimed, the content of Christian theology was to be discovered by analyzing its historical development from Jesus to the present.8 Baur put this into practice. For every doctrine he considered, he wrote a history of that doctrine (a history of the doctrine of reconciliation, a history of the doctrine of the trinity, a history of church historiography, a history of dogma). Tracing the historical development of a doctrine was, for him, crucial for understanding it, because its dynamism was then evident. And, along with Schleiermacher, he considered both New Testament exegesis and contemporary theology to be part of historical theology. Though, as we will see, Ritschl rejected some aspects of 5 Two of those studies—Lotz’s Ritschl and Luther and Jodock’s Ritschl in Retrospect–have already been cited. Others include the introduction and translations found in Philip Hefner’s Three Essays (cited below), David Mueller, An Introduction to the Theology of Albrecht Ritschl (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), Clive Marsh, Albrecht Ritschl and the Problem of the Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992), and James Richmond, Ritschl: A Reappraisal: A Study in Systematic Theology (London: Collins, 1978). 6 Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, ed. and trans. H.R. Mackintosh and A.B. Macaulay (Clifton, New Jersey: Reference Book Publishers, 1966; reprint of Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1900; translation of volume three of Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung [Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1874]). 7 Albrecht Ritschl, Instruction in the Christian Religion, in Albrecht Ritschl: Three Essays, ed. and trans. Philip Hefner (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 220–291. 8 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, trans. Terrence Tice (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1966), paragraphs 79, 80, and 100.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

279

Baur’s approach, he retained the overall commitment to historical theology. So, Ritschl’s historical writings are not irrelevant. Ritschl was doing constructive theology whenever he analyzed and assessed thinkers from the past. Others say “no” because Ritschl did not develop a “school” of theological thought that perpetuated his conclusions (as distinguished from his methods), and he never worked out a comprehensive, systematic theology. Instead, he inspired his students and followers to move beyond his own conclusions. The fact, however, that his theology was generative rather than systematized does not seem to disqualify him from being a significant theologian. In fact, it is precisely the generative nature of Ritschl’s thought that disposes most interpreters to consider him important. He changed the course of nineteenth-century theology and laid out the path that would be followed by mainstream theologians until the 1960s. He did so in six ways: (1) He moved away from the philosophical idealism that had influenced early nineteenth-century theology, especially Schelling and Hegel and, to some extent, Schleiermacher and Baur. The form that this idealism took in Baur was an emphasis on dynamic ideas that played themselves out in history, through a process of dividing and reconciling. Each historical movement (such as Christianity) embodied a dynamic idea, capable of such a dialectical development. This development uncovered potential positions that were contained but not yet actualized in the original idea. The job of the historian was to move back and forth between unpacking the possibilities inherent in the central idea and tracing the actual development of that idea. The “back and forth” was a self-correcting. A historical theologian could have some confidence of being on track whenever the two endeavors yielded the same results. In the mid–1850s Ritschl rejected this approach in order to focus more on a sociological-historical analysis of specific contexts and specific forms of Christianity. He found Baur’s framework to be too confining. It did not take into account the wide diversity within each historical epoch. He viewed Christianity more as a religious community interacting with its changing historical context than as an unfolding dynamic idea. He abandoned the philosophy of history and theological approach associated with idealism. Others followed his path. (2) While still employing careful historical-critical study similar to that practiced by Baur, Ritschl (when compared with his teacher) proposed a somewhat more moderate or centrist understanding of the Bible. Baur’s interpretive framework had influenced the relatively late dates he ascribed to some New Testament books. Along with abandoning that framework, Ritschl proposed earlier dates for these books. Rather than two doctrinally defined opposing parties, he proposed an apostolic consensus that exhibited itself in differing ways in Jewish or Gentile contexts. Contra Schleiermacher, for whom the Old Testament had no independent authority for theology, he valued the Old Testament as

280

Darrell Jodock

an indispensable aid in understanding the New. And he proposed somewhat different ways to assert that the testimony to God and to Christ found in the Bible was normative for Christian theology. Biblical scholars followed Ritschl rather than Baur (even though the latter is usually considered the father of modern biblical scholarship). (3) Ritschl revived a more person-like image of God as “loving will”—in contrast to Schleiermacher’s rather abstract concept of God as the “whence” of the feeling of absolute dependence9 and in contrast to the amalgamation of Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy and theology found in classical theism. One source for this revival was his study of Martin Luther’s dynamic concept of God and the Reformer’s arguments against scholastic theology. Included among Ritschl’s reasons for his view of God was his understanding of the role of metaphysics in theology. This brings us to a closely related fourth way in which Ritschl re-directed theology. (4) Ritschl limited the role of metaphysics in theology in order to focus more fully on the revelation in Christ. For him, metaphysics gave more attention to the world of cause and effect than to the “spiritual” dimension of freedom, creativity, and relationality. Because metaphysics, as he understands it, ignores the distinction between the non-spiritual and the spiritual dimensions of life, it is unsuited for grasping “the form and peculiarity of the spirit”10 and of religion, which is a matter of the spirit. When the word “God” is understood as a conscious personality, “the thought of God … lies beyond the horizon of metaphysic.”11 “Compared with natural science and ethics, metaphysics yields elementary and merely formal knowledge.”12 He acknowledges that metaphysics has a formal role in theology but denies that it has a constitutive one. Though the vocabulary used by the neo-orthodox theologians was different, they largely followed Ritschl’s lead in de-emphasizing the role of metaphysical ideas in theology. (5) Ritschl championed justification by grace, restoring it to the center of theological thinking. Subsequent theology followed his lead. (6) As we have already seen, he directed attention to another generative theologian, Martin Luther. Taken together, these six developments established the direction for theological thinking for the next decades. And in each case it was Ritschl who effected the shift.

9 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), 16. 10 Albrecht Ritschl, Theology and Metaphysics, in Three Essays, 155. 11 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 17. 12 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 16.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

281

The Development of Ritschl’s Thought It will not be possible here to trace the development of Ritschl’s thought in any detail, but a brief overview will be helpful. During the 1840s Ritschl encountered the writings of F.C. Baur. He was attracted to Baur’s disciplined approach to historical theology, and he became a recognized member of the Tübingen School, the name given to several scholars who worked within the general framework Baur had laid out. This framework postulated an early break (during Paul’s lifetime) between the Pauline party and the Jewish-Christian party and then a later reconciliation. Baur noted, for example, that Paul’s speeches in Acts sound quite different from what he says in his own epistles. In Acts, Peter and Paul sound alike. This was one of several pieces of evidence prompting Baur’s suggestion that Acts was a reconciling document. In order to overcome the two-party split that divided early Christianity, Acts emphasized agreement between Paul and Peter. In the 1840s Ritschl studied the Gospels and in 1846 published Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonishe Evangelium des Lucas (The Gospel of Marcion and the Canonical Gospel of Luke).13 In 1850, in response to Albert Schwegler, another member of the Tübingen School, he published the first edition of Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche (The Emergence of the Old [=Early] Catholic Church).14 The question then under discussion within the Tübingen School was how to write the history of the early church. How did it move from a polarized apostolic community to the more unified Catholic Church of the third century? Schwegler had postulated that the third-century church grew out of the JewishChristian party.15 Ritschl argued that it grew out of the Pauline party. In 1853, Baur provided his own answers in Das Christenthum and die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Christianity and the Christian Church of the First Three Centuries).16 Over against Schwegler and Ritschl, Baur argued that the early Catholic Church was a synthesis of the two parties. He sought to identify moderating voices which had enabled the two parties to move closer to each other. For a variety of specific reasons, Ritschl was unsatisfied. In 1857, after publishing several articles on the New Testament, he published a thoroughly revised second edition of Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, in which he abandoned the 13 Albrecht Ritschl, Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonishe Evangelium des Lucas (Tübingen: Osiander’sche Buchhandlung, 1846). 14 Albrecht Ritschl, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche: Eine kirchen- und dogmengeschichtliche Monographie (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1850). 15 Albert Schwegler, Den nachapostolische Zeitalter in den Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Ludwig Fr. Fues, 1846). 16 Ferdinand Christian Baur, Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen: L. Fr. Fues, 1853).

282

Darrell Jodock

doctrinally defined polarity between the Paulinists and the Jewish Christians for a sociological distinction between those Apostles and their followers who worked in a Jewish context and those who worked in a Gentile context. To be sure, Ritschl acknowledged, there were some extreme Paulinists (the Nicolaitans, for example) and some extreme Jewish-Christians, but they were not in the mainstream out of which the early Catholic Church developed. Complex arguments about sources and their use influenced the conclusions to which Baur and Ritschl arrived, but Ritschl accused Baur of allowing philosophical preconceptions to influence his data, and Baur accused Ritschl of betraying the overall project and falling back into an uncritical–hence more conservative–view of early Christianity. The break became personal as well as theological. And the net result was Ritschl’s resolve to avoid ideational schemes for interpreting the history of theology. During the 1860s Ritschl turned to a study of the Medieval and Reformation period. The results of this study can be found in articles he wrote during this period.17 These studies directly influenced the positions expressed in his mature theology. In 1872 and 1874 Ritschl published the three volumes of his Die christliche Lehre von Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation). Revised editions appeared in 1882–3 and 1888–89. The first volume of this, his magnum opus was historical, the second biblical, and the third constructive. Some of its ideas will be discussed below. Ritschl’s next big project was his three-volume History of Pietism.18 Volume one was published in 1880, volume two in 1884, and volume three in 1886. His basic argument was that pietism retained a medieval expectation of withdrawal from the world rather than exhibiting the community engagement recommended (and practiced) by Martin Luther. One of Ritschl’s overall purposes was to explain how faith had more to do with living a life than with knowledge acquired or with intellectual speculation. And he wanted to show how his understanding of this life differed from that of the pietists. As Philip Hefner says, Ritschl did not believe that a preoccupation with piety and a living religion were in error; rather, he disagreed with the specific option which pietists set forth.19

Among other things, he objected to the practice of repeatedly rehearsing one’s transgressions, as if this practice were a required prelude to receiving God’s forgiveness. 17 See Gesammelte Aufsätze (Freiburg i.B. und Leipzig: J.C.B. Mohr, 1893) and “Geschichtliche Studien zur christlichen Lehre von Gott” in Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie 10 (1865): 277– 318, and 13 (1868): 67–133 and 251–302. 18 Albrecht Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus (Bonn: A. Marcus, 1880–86). 19 Philip Hefner, “An Introduction,” in Three Essays, 32.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

283

Ritschl distinguished his theology from the other options available in his day. Once Roman Catholicism and the Anabaptist tradition had been excluded (as they were for all the theological schools in mainline Protestantism), these options included neo-confessionalism (Protestant orthodoxy), Pietism, Rationalism, and the idealism of Baur’s Tübingen School. In one way or another, Ritschl thought, each of these had gone astray, obscuring the insights of the Reformation. Orthodoxy had re-introduced Aristotle and scholastic terminology and over-emphasized the centrality of doctrinal subscription. Pietism had obscured Luther’s understanding of vocation in the world and fallen back into a pre-Reformation view of renouncing the world. Rationalism had transformed Jesus into a teacher and the Christian life into morality, thereby obscuring the religious dimension of the Christian message and individualizing Christianity. The “natural religion” or “religion of reason” postulated by rationalism was supposedly available to anyone, without outside assistance. For Ritschl, this “natural religion, so called,” was a figment of the imagination. There is no religion that is not positive [that is, a specific historical community], and there has never been….Every social religion has been instituted.20

The new approach Ritschl worked out intentionally distanced itself from neoconfessionalism, Pietism, Rationalism, and the idealism of the Tübingen School. Ritschl also objected to materialism or scientism—that is, to determinism or any other rejection of human freedom, dignity, and creativity. In response to scientism, one of the things he pointed out was that anyone who seeks to understand the world automatically makes an implicit distinction between the “spiritual” and the deterministic world of cause and effect, because understanding is itself a “spiritual” act.21 His opposition to scientism did not imply any rejection of science. For him science and religion, science and theology, were compatible.

Ritschl’s Mature Thought As already indicated, though he distanced himself from Baur, Ritschl remained an historical theologian. Along with Baur, he included the study of the New Testament within the domain of historical theology. Understanding what had happened in theology from biblical times through his own day was essential for constructing a well-informed and contextually significant theology. One thing this meant was that he was keenly aware of how theology had been influenced by 20 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 539. 21 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 621.

284

Darrell Jodock

changing contexts. His studies carefully examined this influence. Another thing this meant was that his own thinking developed via an ongoing dialogue between his analysis of theologians in their historical settings and the characteristics of his own day. In his judgment, the origins of a movement were particularly indicative of its nature and purpose. The biblical witness (as interpreted by exegetical theology) was crucial for understanding Christianity correctly, and the purposes and priorities of the Reformers were crucial for understanding Protestantism correctly. (Note again his appeal to Luther and Calvin rather than later summaries of Reformation teaching.) But, approached with a vivid sense of their contextuality, neither the biblical documents nor the theology of the Reformers, though normative, were to be employed uncritically. Ritschl was quite free with his criticisms of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, while at the same time endeavoring to interpret their significance for his own day. One example of the interaction between the Reformers and Ritschl’s own setting can be seen in his interpretation of the gospel. He followed Luther’s emphasis on the priority of grace and on faith as trust. Sin remained as fundamental an impediment in his day as in Luther’s, and to it he gave a good deal of attention. Justification or reconciliation, Ritschl says, is the determination of God as Father to admit sinners, in spite of their sin and consciousness of guilt, to that relation of fellowship with Himself which includes the right of sonship [sic] and the inheritance of eternal life.22

“The form in which sinners appropriate this gift is faith, that is, the emotional trust in God.” This trust, he goes on, “takes the place of the former mistrust which was bound up with the feeling of guilt.”23 “Properly speaking, justification is bestowed by God for Christ’s sake; faith merely accepts it.”24 But he was also conscious of a new context. On his reckoning, human freedom and dignity were being threatened in a new way. One source of this threat was the experience of a world that, according to mid-nineteenthcentury science, functioned as if it were a giant machine, operating according to strict laws of cause and effect. And another source was the growing sense, spawned by increasing industrialization, that society was operating as a giant economic machine. This combination threatened the status of humans. Interpreted for his day, the good news of God’s love reinforced the dignity of humans. It upheld their “spiritual” dimension (freedom, dignity, creativity) over

22 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 120. 23 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 108. 24 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 173.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

285

against all that threatened to make them merely a cog in a machine. To this theme, Ritschl returns again and again. He objects to the tendency of Lutheran Orthodoxy to make faith into an acceptance of doctrine and to the pietist tendency to understand faith as a “resolve to believe.”25 Faith is trust simultaneously in a God whose graciousness has been experienced in and through Christ and in and through the community he founded and in a God whose goal for himself, humans, and the world is a community of love. What a person of faith has experienced is forgiveness and reconciliation. “Faith in Christ is neither belief in the truth of His history nor assent to a scientific judgment of knowledge.”26 To believe in Christ implies that we accept the value of the Divine love, which is manifest in His work, for our reconciliation with God, with that trust which, directed to Him, subordinates itself to God as His and our Father; whereby we are assured of eternal life and blessedness.27

It is important to note the centrality of the community of faith in Ritschl’s interpretation of Christianity. Humans come into contact with Christ’s benefits in and through that community. Words such as “mysterious” and “incalculable” do not occur frequently in Ritschl’s writing, but they surface when he is describing the community. Consider the following: an individual can possess forgiveness, justification, reconciliation, and adoption by God only as members of the religious community of Christ, as the result of the incalculable and mysterious interaction between our own freedom and the determining influences of fellowship.28

This quotation exemplifies his profound sense of the community’s role in shaping religious awareness. And the complexity of that influence is for him beyond our comprehension. Not surprisingly, this leads Ritschl to refuse to specify an ordo salutis or any defined sequence of steps whereby a person comes to faith and grows in spiritual maturity. Ritschl is sometimes accused of de-emphasizing or abandoning original sin, but this was not the case. What he did do was to reinterpret it. The fact of universal sin on the part of man [humans], in accordance with experience, is established by the impulse to the unrestrained exercise of freedom, with which everyone comes into the world and meets the manifold attractions to self-seeking which arise out of the sin of society. Therefore, it happens that some degree of self-seeking takes form in

25 26 27 28

Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 579. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 591. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 591. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 577.

286

Darrell Jodock

every person, even before a clear comprehension of the state of society’s self-consciousness is awakened in him.29

Thus even apart from Christianity humans were familiar with the fact of sin… . But the determination of its nature, and the estimate of its compass and its worthlessness, are expressed in a peculiar form in Christianity; for here there obtain ideas of God, of the supreme good, of the moral destiny of man, and of redemption, different from those which are to be found in any other religion.30

Universal sin is not just an individual matter. It involves as association of individuals; our sin produces sin in others. The result is a “kingdom of sin.”31 In Richmond’s words, universal sin, as Ritschl’s sees it, “corrupts customs, principles and institutions; this is an essentially cumulative process which progressively undermines each succeeding generation.”32 When Ritschl looks at the theological options of his day, he discerns a division between faith and life that he endeavors to overcome. The device for doing so is his understanding of the kingdom of God. One dimension of the kingdom is the activity of God, forgiving and reconciling human beings. This dimension he calls “religious”—that is, having to do with God’s actions. The Justification and Reconciliation of sinners with God, considered as an operation of God effected through the instrumentality of Christ, are strictly religious conceptions.33

Religious conceptions, Ritschl continues, are always the possession of a community, and they express not merely a relation between God and man, but always at the same time a relation toward the world on the part of God, and those who believe in Him.34

Since Ritschl’s purpose is to tie together theology and ethics, one might expect that the second dimension would be human morality, but he does not go that route, saying instead, “The Kingdom of God likewise is a directly religious conception.”35 It is about God’s sovereignty. God is the one who establishes the goal, which is a community of love, a “union of mankind through love.”36 Both in reconciling humans and in establishing the kingdom, God takes the initiative. And in both cases, God invites a response—in one case, faith, and in the other case, a lively sense of vocation which guides thinking and behavior. Those who 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Ritschl, Instruction in the Christian Religion, 233. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 328. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 335 and 338. Richmond, Ritschl: A Reappraisal, 129. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 27. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 27. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 30. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 414.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

287

experience God’s love make God’s goal their own. Thus, both dimensions involve an element of human activity. And this human involvement seems crucial for the attainment of God’s goals. However, this is not the synergism that the Reformation opposed, because God’s adoption comes first. Human activity occurs within the reconciled relationship, not as part of a pathway into it. The second kind of human involvement, Ritschl calls “moral.” Unfortunately, the word “moral” has been the source of misunderstanding. What Ritschl means by the term is not following rules but having a vocation, a calling, to serve the larger good, a good that transcends family loyalties, workplace loyalties, and national loyalties. His meaning is closer to “existential purpose” than to what the word “moral” typically connotes. Ritschl says that Jesus is before all else the Founder of a religion and the Redeemer of men [humans] from the dominion of the world. He is author of a moral code only in so far as the raising of men [humans] above the world, and their fellowship in this relation, carries with it the ordering of their conduct towards each other in the Kingdom of God.37

In any case, the idea of a kingdom of God with two foci was for him a way to hold together gift and task, the reconciling activity and overall purpose of God and the invitation to faith and vocation. In the kingdom, God’s aim and the aim of humans coincide. In Justification and Reconciliation, Ritschl puts it this way: Christianity, then, is the monotheistic, completely spiritual, and ethical religion, which, based on the life of its Author as Redeemer and as Founder of the Kingdom of God, consists in the freedom of the children of God, involves the impulse to conduct from the motive of love, aims at the moral organization of mankind, and grounds blessedness on the relation of sonship [sic] to God, as well as on the Kingdom of God.38

Dogmatics “comprises all the presuppositions of Christianity under the form of Divine operation; ethics, presupposing the former discipline, comprises the province of personal and social Christian life under the form of personal activity. Now since the revelation of God is directed not only to the goal of redemption, but also to the final end of the kingdom which He realizes in fellowship with the redeemed,” redemption cannot be separated from the kingdom nor can the kingdom be separated from redemption.39 And this means dogmatics cannot be separated from ethics nor ethics from dogmatics. Ritschl rejected the satisfaction theory of the Atonement. He points out that Jesus forgave sins even before he was crucified, so his death was not essential for forgiveness.40 And he points out that, contra Anselm, there is no tension between 37 38 39 40

Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 414. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 13. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 14. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 537.

288

Darrell Jodock

love and justice in God, such that God requires the punishment of Jesus.41 What Jesus did do was to found a community in which the forgiveness of God is experienced. Participation in the community means receiving the benefits of forgiveness not just on a sporadic basis but as a constant reality. Forgiveness is available in advance and with a consistency that reconciles God and human beings. (With sin comes guilt, which is a mistrust of God. The forgiveness available in the community of Christ includes the forgiveness of guilt, and this yields reconciliation.) An option for someone who rejected the satisfaction theory was Socinianism. It denied the divinity of Jesus and viewed him primarily as an example. But Ritschl does not find its view acceptable because it dissolves the connection between the person of Jesus and forgiveness—a connection maintained by Christians down through the centuries. On its view, Jesus merely announces forgiveness. For Ritschl it is important that God is at work in Jesus. Now it is not sufficient for my purpose to bring out what Jesus has said about the forgiveness of sins attached to His Person and His death. For even if His statements might seem perfectly clear, their significance becomes completely intelligible only when we see how they are reflected in the consciousness of those who believe in Him, and how the members of the Christian community trace back their consciousness of pardon to the Person and the action and passion of Jesus.42

Ritschl takes very seriously Melanchthon’s expression that to know Christ is to know his benefits. When the community experiences what Jesus accomplishes, it recognizes that Jesus is divine—that is, that Jesus embodies the outlook and purposes and work of God. This embodiment reflects the fact that Jesus made God’s “end” or goal his own. Jesus’ vocation was to found a community in which forgiveness would be given its members and in which they would be invited to take up as their personal goal the kingdom of God. His death resulted from the tenacity with which he adhered to his vocation.

The Contemporary Significance of Ritschl’s Thought Three interlocking features of Ritschl’s thought have already been noted. One is how path-breaking and thought-provoking it was. Those influenced by his teaching and writing were excited by the way he re-framed the heritage and how he identified the issues to be explored. They were inspired to undertake additional investigations and arrive at conclusions that moved beyond his own. This continues to be an ongoing value of his theology. A second feature is how pen41 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 473. 42 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 1.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

289

etrating and informative a dialogue he was able to create between theologians of the past and the theological needs of the present by analyzing carefully their respective contexts and their distinctive responses to those contexts. An ongoing value of his theology is that it challenges us to do the same today. A third feature is the normative importance he ascribed to the origins of a community—to the biblical witness for Christians as a whole and, for Protestants, to Luther and the other Reformers. The dialogue between theologians of the past and the theological needs of the present is not allowed to float. An evaluative process is at work: how well does theology communicate to contemporaries the basic Christian message and its implications for faith and life? And how deeply is a Protestant theologian inspired by Luther’s insights? This evaluative assessment is an essential component in Ritschl’s approach and is part of its ongoing value for theology. It avoids theological relativism, on the one hand, and an overly supernaturalist view of the Bible, on the other. In addition, while distinguishing the authority of the Bible, it avoids isolating the Bible from the history of theology and the history of biblical exegesis. One example of how today’s context has changed is that Ritschl worked in a pre-ecumenical setting. The ways in which he distinguished Protestant theology from Roman Catholic thought, though often interesting and self-revealing, do not provide a roadmap for contemporary theology. It needs to think carefully about the implications of the conversations and increased cooperation among Protestant churches that began in 1910 and between Roman Catholics on the one hand and Protestants and Eastern Orthodox churches on the other that began with Vatican Council II. Though Ritschl and other nineteenth-century modern theologians did not foresee these developments, they prepared the way when they shifted theology away from formulating and defending mutually exclusive definitions toward crafting descriptions. This shift opened the doors for dialogue, because more than one valid description of a significant event (such as God’s revelation in Christ) is possible. Yes, there remains a boundary beyond which a purported description is simply wrong, but within that boundary differing descriptions can be valid. Ecumenical conversations involve explorations of historical context, biblical appeals, and contemporary significance. Once re-contextualized into an ecumenical setting, Ritschl’s theology provides valuable and challenging insights in all of these areas. Another way in which Ritschl’s context differs from ours is that he gave little attention to Christianity’s relation to other religions. The situation in which Christians find themselves today raises questions which were not so pressing for Ritschl. And the perspective brought to these questions is different. Ritschl’s references to Christianity as the “perfect religion,” for example, seem a little jarring today, not because they play a huge role in his theological outlook but because they employ Christian priorities as the yardstick by which to judge

290

Darrell Jodock

Christian insights. Today such claims seem circular and provincial. What Ritschl does do is to try to secure a place, over against scientism and secularism, for the importance of a religious outlook. This endeavor is of ongoing importance. The same is true of Ritschl’s readiness to endorse epistemological caution with regard to certain questions about God and Christ and the dynamics of Christian believing and his emphasis on the relational character of faith as trust. Re-contextualizing is needed, but there is much in Ritschl’s theological outlook on which theology can draw as it works out its relation to other world religions. As already mentioned, Ritschl regarded the dignity and freedom and creativity of humans to be under threat from machine-like forces in nature and society. To some extent, this is still the case. But the view of the world that comes through science has been significantly altered. The image of a machine is no longer adequate. A contemporary image needs to be more dynamic and complex. Alongside larger patterns of regularity, the picture needs to include subatomic chaos. An evolving world exhibits the capacity for novelty as well a capacity for regularity. And, quite importantly, in addition to those aspects of nature that resist human control, there is ever-growing evidence of the exploitative and destructive influence humans have had on nature. We should recall that Ritschl’s diagnosis extended beyond nature to include economic forces. The massive, increasingly global scope of powerful economic systems makes his analysis seem somewhat more cogent in this area, but economic systems are also not immune to human influence. In any case, his diagnosis of modernity has not lost its significance, but changes in context mean that it must be supplemented by reminders to humans that their vocation includes care for the earth as well as practicing mutual love among humans. The significance of Ritschl’s thought is that it provides a framework. His ideas regarding divine providence and the shared purpose of God and humans can function as the basis for an expanded sense of vocation. This expanded sense needs to include greater attention to the nature of God’s ongoing creation and the role of humans in fostering a healthy world. In other words, in Ritschl’s context, he chose to emphasize matters related to the second article of the Apostles’ Creed—Jesus, grace, justification, forgiveness, reconciliation. In this regard theology followed his lead for threequarters of a century. But, in order for theology to wrestle with the issues front and center during the last decades–ecology, sexuality, the costs and benefits of technology, societal fragmentation and polarization, the role of religion in the public sector, inter-religious relations, and the like–the second-article concerns on which he and his successors focused now need to be supplemented by relatively more attention to the first article and its contemporary implications. In this regard, theology can follow Ritschl’s lead by retrieving neglected aspects of Luther’s thought, which celebrate the created world and include a lively sense of God’s ongoing creation, and by drawing upon other figures in the history of

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

291

theology. And it can follow Ritschl’s lead by giving careful attention to our setting and its deeper challenges. Ritschl offers a framework and a procedure for advancing this discussion into our new context, along with a provocative expectation that it be done. Herein lies his significance. Ritschl does not use the language of humans as co–creators, co-responsible for the wellbeing of other humans and of the world, but the idea is not alien to his understanding of the relationship between divine activity and human participation in the kingdom of God. So, one avenue of contemporary development might be the “relational” theology of, say, Terence Fretheim43 or the “open theology” under discussion by others. For Ritschl everything is known through its relationships. This is true of God, who is known through revelation. God is not hidden behind God’s actions or relationships but is found in them. And it is true of Jesus and of humans. Since Ritschl’s God is person-like and relational, it would not be a large step to follow Fretheim’s emphasis on God’s responsiveness and what that means about a more open future. The point is certainly not that Fretheim is a Ritschlian but only that a relational theology is one possible avenue a theologian can follow if influenced by Ritschl’s way of framing the questions and of understanding the methods to be used in modern theology. One other comment can be made about Ritschl’s concept of God. For reasons that are quite understandable, given the positions he was trying to avoid, Ritschl tended to dismiss the importance of God’s wrath in the interest of focusing on God’s love. If “wrath” is understood as punishment or used as an inducement to guilt, he is on the right track. But, if “wrath” is understood differently—as the anguish of God in the face of human mistreatment of other humans and other creatures—then its dismissal becomes problematic. Love is then emptied of its relational significance. It becomes abstract and ceases to matter in the way it should to persons of faith. At this point, Ritschl’s theology needs correction, but the adjustment can be a relatively easy one and does not undermine the overall value of his approach. Something similar can be said about another lacuna in Ritschl’s theology. As already mentioned, there is no clear identification of the forces at work in society that foster injustice and thwart loving one’s neighbor. To be sure, he does not ignore the difficulties of practicing love. In Richmond’s words, for Ritschl the world of natural society, organized as it is for its own ends, is, like the world of nature, not merely apathetic but even hostile to the attainment of those moral and spiritual ends encompassed in the divine and human end of the creation, the Kingdom of God.44 43 See Terence Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005). 44 Richmond, Ritschl: A Reappraisal, 93.

292

Darrell Jodock

Nor is Ritschl optimistic about the degree to which the ideals of the kingdom can be embodied in the present. But he does not seem to identify the societal forces that need to be confronted and changed, nor does he call for systemic changes in society. His emphasis is on coping with society and not being enslaved by it rather than changing it. In his descriptions of the kingdom, the emphasis on love is clear, but justice receives less attention. Likewise, humility and patience are highlighted, while active resistance to specific dehumanizing forces in society receives less attention. He says little about the cost of social change, even though he gives evidence of being aware of it. On this set of issues, Ritschl was by no means alone. Many other nineteenth-century theologians shared this inattention. But we live on the other side of several foundation-shaking developments of the twentieth century, such as World War I, the Depression, Nazism, World War II, the Cold War, Stalinist Communism, attempts to move beyond colonialism, the stubborn persistence of racism, and a growing awareness of the disconnect between consumerism and the limited resources of this world. These and many other developments have been reminders that ideologies and “isms” have a kind of power that needs to be confronted and transformed in order for human dignity to flourish. Here is a lacuna that a contemporary theology inspired by Ritschl would need to fill. But this adjusting can be done without abandoning his framework. For example, Martin Luther’s own understanding of vocation was more dynamic and transformative than was Ritschl’s. To return again to Luther for insight and inspiration is to follow rather than abandon Ritschl’s lead. One aspect of Ritschl’s theology that remains as relevant today as it was in his is his emphasis on the communal dimension of Christianity. Access to the riches of Christianity was for him through the community of faith that Jesus founded. … if we can rightly know God only if we know Him through Christ, then we can know Him only if we belong to the community of believers.45

For him, there simply is no way to come to faith or to live out one’s faith apart from the church, understood as a community. Not only does God’s adoption influence growth in the faith, so does one’s associations in the community. The portrait of a human being that emerges is one that is inherently social. This perspective offers an important and valuable antidote to the individualism of contemporary Western society and to the overly individualized understandings of the Christian faith, particularly among Protestants in America and among those who are “spiritual but not religious.” Ritschl’s frequent reminders of the communal character of Christian life are consistent with what one finds in Lu-

45 Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 7.

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889)

293

ther, and the communal dimension of Christianity is a crucial component in any contextually sensitive theology today. But how does this emphasis on Christian community relate to inter-religious understanding? Does it get in the way? Only if one is looking for a religion-ingeneral. The alternative to a closed particularity (exclusivism) is not religion-ingeneral, but instead an open particularity that is ready to engage in mutually beneficial dialogue and in a mutually enriched commitment to the common good. When combined with epistemological caution and the avoidance of ideology, Ritschl’s emphasis on community can fit very well with a commitment to inter-religious understanding. To return one more time to Ritschl the teacher: His most significant influence was on his students, who quickly discovered ideas that moved beyond what Ritschl himself uncovered. One thinks of persons as diverse and influential as Karl Holl, the Luther scholar; Adolph von Harnack, the famous historian of dogma; Wilhelm Herrmann, the constructive theologian and teacher of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann; Ernst Troeltsch, the philosopher of religion; Walter Rauschenbusch, the German-American advocate of a social gospel; and others. They all were influenced and inspired, but none reproduced his theology. Ritschl was important as a provocative mentor, not as the author of a system to be replicated. And this remains Ritschl’s chief value for today. He re-interprets the tradition in interesting ways. His offers a penetrating and quite often perceptive analysis of alternative positions. His appeals to Luther, while insightful, inspire even deeper engagement with Luther’s outlook.46 His concern to connect faith and one’s vocation in the world is as relevant today as it was then. Equally contemporary are other issues with which he wrestles, such as science and religion, a communityoriented vs. individualistic understanding of Christianity, the nature of faith, the connection between God’s purpose and human activity, the shortcomings of the still ubiquitous satisfaction theory of the atonement, the importance of historical study to heighten one’s appreciation for the role of context in theology, and the limits of human knowing along with the need both to seek understanding and to live with unanswered questions. If his chief legacy is as a provocative mentor, an important part of this legacy is his deep analysis of his own time. In the words of James Richmond, the striking influence wielded by Ritschl’s new theological construction derived from the fact that from his encounter with the culture of his day he produced a strikingly

46 Note David Lotz’s analysis (especially in chapter IV of Ritschl and Luther) of the deficiencies in Ritschl’s portrait of Luther.

294

Darrell Jodock

relevant analysis of the forces and factors which powerfully moved and intimately concerned very many of his West European contemporaries.47

To honor Ritschl’s legacy is to delve deeply into the tendencies at work in our society and, drawing on the Scriptures and the insights of Martin Luther and others, to craft a compelling vocabulary for communicating the gospel to all who are shaped by those societal tendencies and for clearly connecting faith and daily life.

47 Richmond, Ritschl: A Reappraisal, 276.

Mark Oldenburg

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

The preface to Charles Porterfield Krauth’s magnum opus is a remarkably selfrevealing document. It includes three keys to his thinking and to his work. First, as the title of The Conservative Reformation and its Theology suggests, Krauth saw his theological tradition as representing a positive direction for the church, one which combines the dynamics of conservatism, reformation, and progress in a uniquely healthy and faithful way, refusing to ignore any member of the triad. His theology, therefore, would represent a balancing act in both means and ends. Second, in the preface he claimed for Lutheranism a glorious, indeed imperial, future. Some strain of Christianity must, he thought, come to dominate the world, and it would be the strain with the greatest internal consistency and strength. He hoped to provide Lutheranism with both that consistency and that assurance. Finally, he admitted that his own understandings had developed over time: “No man can be more fixed in his prejudice against the views here defended than the author himself once was; no man can be more decided in his opinion that those views were false than the author is now decided in his faith that they are the truth.”1 Unlike those of his professor, Samuel Simon Schmucker, who seems never to have changed his mind, Krauth’s theology developed over the course of the nineteenth century. Like the English-speaking American Lutheran church of which he was the foremost theologian, Krauth moved from confessional nonchalance to ex animo subscription to the confessions, from practice dominated by revivalism to practice dominated by catechesis. By his own declaration, his development seems to have been guided by his deep reading and consideration of Reformation and post-Reformation texts, rather than by any significant personal relationship with more recently arrived confessionalist Lutherans (except in the case of pulpit and altar fellowship, as we shall see later). Krauth is a major theological figure not because of his constructive theological work; he was truly a synthesizer and popularizer of positions already laid out in the sixteenth century 1 Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1871)), xiii.

296

Mark Oldenburg

and later. Rather, he was a major theological figure because his stylistic abilities made his synthesis so accessible and convincing, and because his leadership proved that confessional Lutheranism could speak English and take its place in the American scene – affirmations that Schmucker was uninterested in making and that C.F.W. Walther suspected were untrue. This essay will examine three aspects of Krauth’s work: The Conservative Reformation, the controversies regarding the Galesburg Rule, and his work with the philosophy of George Berkeley. Each of these will show a man of deep learning, willing to engage in controversy without animus, eager to articulate his opponents’ strengths as well as their weaknesses. They will also show a man of his times, deeply steeped in the Romantic practice of hagiography and the Romantic notion of a golden age which might be repristinated for present use. And they will show a person who can still be read for pleasure, even on the most arcane of subjects. But all of them are understandable only in the context of the church divisions which split English-speaking Lutherans in the mid-nineteenth century, which is inextricably interwoven with Krauth’s own biography. Charles Porterfield Krauth was born in 1823 to Charles Philip Krauth, then pastor in Martinsburg, Virginia. The elder Krauth, only twenty-seven, was himself the son of a schoolmaster and church musician. Charles Porterfield Krauth’s mother died when he was less than a year old, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents while Charles Philip Krauth served a church in Philadelphia. In 1833 the father was elected to teach at Gettysburg Seminary, but that institution could not yet support him, so that he became instead president of Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College. The next year the now eleven-year-old Porterfield Krauth rejoined his newly re-married father, and soon entered college himself. He was confirmed at fourteen, entered seminary at sixteen, was graduated at eighteen, and licensed to serve a congregation in suburban Baltimore. Within a year ill health had forced him to resign, and take another call. In 1844 he married Susan Reynolds and was asked to prepare a paper for the Maryland Synod on the subject of the Lord’s Supper. This paper, defending the thencontroverted doctrine of the Real Presence, is the first indication of the trajectory of his thinking. While Biblically founded, its clearest authorities were the Augsburg Confession and the Lutheran theologians of the first few generations of the Reformation. Contemporary scholarship – whether of constructive theology or of the confessional revival which had been going on in Europe for a quarter century – was notably absent. In 1847, following a period as interim editor of the Lutheran Observer, Krauth accepted a call to Virginia. There his daughter Susan died and his wife became seriously ill, but Krauth’s intellectual life blossomed. His neighboring pastors were his closest friends – Beale Melanchthon Schmucker and Joseph A. Seiss – who shared his bibliomania and his developing confessional consciousness. The

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

297

health of his wife, however, impelled him to request a leave of absence in 1852, to spend the winter in the Danish Virgin Islands, in hopes that the tropical heat and sea air would do her good. Thus Krauth had not only first-hand exposure to followers of N.F.S. Grundtvig, whose hymns he would later translate, but service in a Presbyterian church during a pastoral vacancy. It was the first time he faced an integrated congregation, half white and half Black, “sitting promiscuously in the pews and at the communion table, no distinction being made.” Whatever its serendipitous advantages, the leave in the Virgin Islands did not, however, have its intended result, and Susan Krauth died in 1853. Krauth buried himself in scholarship and church leadership, being elected president of the Virginia Synod, and remarried in 1855. In that same year he accepted a call to succeed William A. Passavant as pastor of First Lutheran Church in Pittsburgh and, after four years, was called to a church in Philadelphia. There he stayed for only two years after which, again at Passavant’s request, he became the editor of the newly merged Lutheran and Missionary. Here his facility in writing, his catholicity of interest, and his penchant for polemic received full play. The Lutheran and Missionary was, like the older Lutheran Observer, intended to be a popular publication. It contained news of Lutheranism and other denominations from around the world, as well as devotional materials, popular articles on history and theology, hymns, poetry, and household hints and recipes. Its subscription basis was in the seaboard and the Midwest, and unlike the Lutheran Observer its editorial theology was strongly confessional and anti-revivalistic. Krauth spelled out his intended style and substance in his inaugural editorial: We are not “old Lutherans.” If there be a Lutheranism which is exclusive, harsh, and repellant, … which cannot discriminate between essence and accident, between truth and her clothes, which holds to what has been simply because it has been, and regards novelty as the only unpardonable sin, which refuses all change, and would die rather than submit to any adaptation, that is not our Lutheranism. The Lutheranism we have learned to love is moderate in its tone, free from the spirit of false exclusiveness, and makes no pretensions which have any show of extravagance. We do not claim that the Lutheran Church is the Church universal. We do claim that she is a part of it, pure in her genuine doctrines, earnest in her genuine life, uniting conservatism with ardour, a quiet, unpretending, yet great, and useful and beneficent church, whose living members love their Saviour with their whole heart, and have the witness and assurance in themselves that they are loved by Him. … We are “American Lutherans.” We accept the great fact that God has established our Zion in this western world under circumstances wholly different from those in which her past life has been nurtured. New forms of duty, new types of thought, new necessities of adaptation, are here to tax all her strength, and to test how far she is able to maintain her vital power under the necessary changes of form … [Our church] must not be afraid to trust herself on this wild current of the quick life of America. She must not cloister herself, but show in her freedom, and in her wise use of the opportunity of the

298

Mark Oldenburg

present, that she knows how robust is her spiritual life, and how secure are her principles, however novel or trying the tests to which they are subjected…. And yet we are not American Lutherans, if to be such means that we are to have a new faith, a mutilated confession, a life which abruptly breaks with all our history, a spirit alien to that of the genuine Lutheranism of the past.2

With his move to Philadelphia, Krauth entered the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, becoming immediately (remarkably, in that body whose stodginess was the stuff of legend) its most authoritative theologian. Together with Beale Melanchthon Schmucker and Joseph A. Seiss, who had also moved onto the territory of the Mother Synod, Krauth sealed the superiority of the Englishspeaking portion of that body in its liturgical and constructive theological work. It is no surprise, then, that he was present at the critical meetings of the General Synod in 1864 and 1866. The Ministerium of Pennsylvania had rejoined the General Synod a decade earlier. Samuel Simon Schmucker was still the dominant theologian in the General Synod, but it was clear that the sort of confessional subscription he asserted in the Definite Synodical Platform (1855) was no longer sufficient even in that body. The Platform, describing a subscription which did not require agreement with such “medieval remnants” as the real presence and baptismal regeneration, had been affirmed by only a couple of the smallest of constituent synods, and denounced by others. However, the Pennsylvania Ministerium declared upon its admission that it would leave the General Synod if confessional subscription were undermined. When, in 1864, the Frankean Synod of upstate New York was admitted to the body without any reference to the Augsburg Confession in its constitution, the delegates from the Ministerium left the convention. At its next meeting, in 1866, the president of the General Synod ruled that by leaving in that way, the Pennsylvania Ministerium had withdrawn from the Synod, and refused to seat its delegates. The Pennsylvania Ministerium, together with several other constituent synods, indeed withdrew at that point and issued a Fraternal Appeal, written by Krauth, for a new general body of Lutherans, formed on the basis of subscription to the unaltered Augsburg Confession. When this body met and organized as the General Council in 1867, it affirmed as its doctrinal basis a series of theses on the church that were also written and defended by Krauth. Simultaneously, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania established its own seminary and named Krauth as one of its three professors. While assigned respon2 Charles Porterfield Krauth, as quoted by Adolph Spaeth, Charles Porterfield Krauth, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1909), 2:36–38.

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

299

sibility for teaching “Systematic Divinity, Encyclopedia and Methodology, Hebrew, Old and New Testament Exegesis, Church History, and Ecclesiastical Polity,” he only actually ever taught the first two and last on the list. He resigned from his editorial post in order to give full attention to his teaching duties at the new seminary, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught philosophy. Krauth’s work, however, was not bound by the General Council and the new seminary. In 1871 he published The Conservative Reformation. More a collection of occasional articles than a truly systematic treatment, it nonetheless summed up decades of thought and publishing on the structure of a Lutheranism based on the Augsburg Confession. While it summarized and reflected seventeenth-century Lutheran polemics against the Reformed, its scope and confessional clarity were widely appreciated among American Reformed scholars of the Mercersburg stripe. More importantly, The Conservative Reformation was greeted with approval and indeed amazement among the newer Lutheran immigrant communities. That Lutheran tenets could be so comprehensively and comprehensibly embodied in English was, in the Norwegian, German, and Swedish church press, cause for surprise and delight. The book remained a standard text in many Lutheran seminaries well into the twentieth century, and has been regularly reprinted. The establishment of the new general body, however, caused divisions between friends as well as within synods and congregations. General Synod and General Council factions within congregations went to court, each claiming to be the true congregation, and thereby legal possessors of the congregation’s property. Often the argument depended on whether the General Synod faction might be fairly identified as “Lutheran,” as required in congregational charters. Krauth often faced James Brown, Schmucker’s successor at Gettysburg Seminary, as expert witnesses on this issue, and their relationship, never close, turned fully into enmity. The question of what made a person, a congregation, or a synod, “Lutheran” was one which pervaded the rest of Krauth’s work. He defended the General Council’s basis – ex animo subscription to the Augsburg Confession – with intensity and fervor. The hopes with which the General Council was founded, that the Augsburg Confession would provide a sufficient basis for Lutheran cooperation, were soon seen to be overly optimistic. The newer synods of the Midwest, unsatisfied with the specificity of the body’s confession of faith, asked for clarification on what became known as the Four Points: chiliasm, membership in secret societies, and pulpit and altar fellowship with non-Lutherans. It was the latter two which caused the most controversy, and which the Council tried to address and set to rest with the Rule adopted at Galesburg in 1875: “Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only – Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only,” a formulation based on

300

Mark Oldenburg

Krauth’s ruling as president of the Council two years earlier, and one which Krauth would defend vigorously for the rest of his life.3 The Galesburg Rule, however, did not satisfy such interested synods as Iowa and Ohio. Nor was it acceptable as a rule (even with pastoral exceptions allowed) to many in the East. There the opposite sides seemed to fall generally along the lines of foreign birth and language. The native-born J.A. Seiss, Krauth’s old friend and colleague, opposed it vociferously; the German-born, Adolph Spaeth, Krauth’s colleague and eventual son-in–law, argued as vehemently for it. But these lines were most certainly blurred: Krauth himself was as American in ancestry as Seiss, and G.F. Krotel, who opposed the rule, was as recent an immigrant as Spaeth. Certainly the Rule represents a stricter line than Krauth himself had practiced earlier in his ministry. (In fact, when he served as interim for Seiss in the early 1860s, he invited non-Lutherans to preach, which Seiss had never done!). With this Rule, however, in the last decade of his life, Krauth was for the first time accused or suspected by his colleagues of being affected in his judgment by recent immigrants. J.A. Seiss, in particular, suspected that Krauth’s position on the Galesburg Rule resulted from the influence of the Fritschel brothers of the Iowa Synod rather than from Krauth’s own fundamentals or experience. By the late 1870’s Krauth was aging out of proportion to his years. His participation in the General Council’s law suits, the necessity of explaining and defending the Galesburg Rule, his responsibilities for administration and teaching at Philadelphia Seminary and the University of Pennsylvania (where had had become vice-provost and essentially chief operating officer), together with his continuing work as author, translator, and editor were taking their toll. Friends collected sufficient funds for him to travel to Luther sites in Germany, in order to write a biography of the Reformer for the quadricentennial of his birth. That book was not written, however, and the trip did not restore either his health or his vitality. He died on January 2, 1883. Ten years before he died, Krauth published an edition of George Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. While much of this edition simply reproduces A.C. Fraser’s earlier English critical preface and translation, it includes almost 150 pages of prolegomena written by Krauth himself. Granted that an introduction to Berkeley’s idealism is of limited interest to theologians, the prolegomena give interesting insights to the workings of Krauth’s mind, and the choice of Berkeley as a subject is of further interest.

3 For the Galesburg Rule, see S.E. Ochsenford, Documentary History of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America (Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1912), 219–20.

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

301

According to Robert Ellis Thompson, one of Krauth’s colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Krauth examined Berkeley’s philosophy because Berkeley was the greatest enemy of Krauth’s own philosophical position, “Scotch Philosophy and Natural Realism.” This position, also called “commonsense realism” holds that there is a single external reality which can be perceived through the senses. Berkeleyan idealism holds, to the contrary, that matter has no metaphysical reality, that the mind can only perceive ideas, and can only infer the existence of other minds and of God. It is remarkable that Krauth brought to publication the writings of someone with whom he disagreed so significantly. It is even more remarkable that his prolegomena include not only introductions to Berkeley’s life and philosophy, but also explanations of Berkeley’s continuing influence and contemporary relevance. It is a tour de force of the history of philosophy and of the various idealisms, especially English and German, but also Buddhist and Hindu, of the nineteenth century. Krauth’s range of knowledge in this field is impressive. Most interesting is an extended section in which Krauth explains both the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley’s system. Until the very end of this section, without Thompson’s word to guide us, readers would be hard pressed to conclude that Krauth disagrees with Berkeley. Like Thomas Aquinas, Krauth states positions with which he differs with respect and clarity. No disciple would affirm the strengths with greater force, and the weaknesses are never dismissive. And at the end of the section, while remaining respectful, Krauth reveals his great objection to Berkeley’s system. It is imbedded in Krauth’s vision of a developing philosophical system which combines Idealism and Realism in a new system: Idealism is not the last result of philosophical ripening. Already the marks of transition are manifest. The philosophy of the future is one which will be neither absolute Idealism nor absolute Realism, but will accept the facts of both, and fuse them in a system which, like man himself, shall blend two realities as distinct yet inseparable. The duality of natures harmonized, yet not vanishing, in the monism of person, a universe of accordant not of discordant matter and mind, held together and ever developing under the plan and control of the one Supreme, who is neither absolutely immanent nor absolutely supramundane, but relatively both.4

Krauth calls, therefore, for a philosophical system which echoes and includes the paradoxical nature of orthodox theology – if you will, an incarnational philosophy which does not set mind at war with matter. Indeed, he makes almost exactly that point later. Idealism attempts, he claims, to rescue self-consciousness from the attacks of materialism, but this claim is illusory: 4 Charles Porterfield Krauth, “Prolegomena” to A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, by George Berkeley (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1878), 137–38.

302

Mark Oldenburg

Idealism can only affirm “There is consciousness,” but it does not know what is conscious. If the Ego be assumed to be the object of knowledge, it is in that very fact transmuted into idea; it is the mirage of a mirage. Two things which God hath joined together cannot be put sunder without loss to both. The murder of matter is the suicide of mind.5

We will meet this Krauth again in The Conservative Reformation. There, too, is the breadth and depth of scholarship. There, too, is the respect for opponents. And there, too, is the almost Chestertonian ability to turn a phrase. Published in 1871 and dedicated to his father, who had died four years earlier, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology is Krauth’s most enduring achievement. Most of its contents first saw light as occasional articles, written for the Lutheran and Missionary and other publications, or addresses to scholarly or ecclesiastical bodies. It represents, therefore, decades of research and thinking, yet it has an organizing principle and a unifying rationale. It aims to introduce a structure of Lutheran theology, based most especially on the Augsburg Confession, and to defend that structure against attack. Krauth expects those attacks to come from Reformed or Roman Catholic theologians or American sectarians. But Krauth also engages those self-described as Lutheran who do not fully subscribe to the Augsburg Confession. We will consider these adversaries, and the arguments they inspire, below. The book’s table of contents makes the organization clear, although perhaps more clear than its organization actually is. It begins with a narrative of the Reformation itself, focusing on Martin Luther as chief organ and Luther’s New Testament as chief instrument. It then defends the Lutheran church as the single true representative of the Conservative Reformation which began in the sixteenth century, and describes the confessional principle which provides unity and continuity to that church. That principle is incarnated primarily in the Augsburg Confession and secondarily in the Book of Concord, which is an exposition of the Augustana. After a chapter clarifying misrepresentations of Lutheran theology, Krauth examines four central doctrines with peculiarly Lutheran understandings: original sin, the person of Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. These doctrines are explained and defined and defended against historical criticism. While this organization does bind the book together, its origin as discrete, occasional pieces is obvious. Most obvious is the chapter correcting misunderstandings of Lutheran theology, which is an extended review of a single book of church history, written for the Lutheran and Missionary in early 1867 and included here without significant change. The opening chapters on Luther are of a very different tone from the rest of the book. While demonstrating in its 5 Krauth, “Prolegomena,” 141.

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

303

opening pages his mastery of secondary literature about the Reformer from a variety of perspectives, this section is primarily popular, presenting the Reformer as a flawless hero in vivid and sometimes purple prose. It is seasoned with quotations, but they are mostly paeans from unexpected sources – Roman Catholics, Reformed theologians, German philosophers and English historians. But the meat of the book is the chapters on the Augsburg Confession and the doctrines taught or derived from it. Here Krauth is truly magisterial, outlining not only the history of the document, but also the history of its defense and use. The Conservative Reformation is a very useful compendium of Orthodox interpreters of the Augsburg Confession from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Again, Krauth quotes widely and authoritatively, but rarely from his contemporaries, and never, I believe, from Americans, native or immigrant, English, German, or Scandinavian. His authorities are those he impoverished his family to acquire: books from the earlier centuries. As a confirmed controversialist, Krauth spends much of his energy here on its defense. He does, indeed, state positively what has been believed and taught by Lutherans who affirm the Augsburg Confession, but he expends much more ink on clarifying misunderstandings and responding to accusations. Especially in the later part of the book, as he treats the central, controverted doctrines, he clearly is responding to criticism by Roman Catholics and Reformed theologians, not only of his own time, but of the last four centuries. These chapters are filled not only with technical language, drawn from the theological debates of these centuries, but also recommendations for practice and understanding, especially regarding the sacraments. Among the important points he raises, explains, and defends, are concomitance, communication idiomatum, consubstantiation, omnivolipresence, and the various sorts of bodily presence. In all of these chapters, he argues from both Scriptural and confessional bases, affirming the internal consistency of the Lutheran system, and its consonance with Scripture, against the criticisms of both Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians. On the other hand, Krauth does not so much argue against American sectarians as dismiss them: If you look round among the Protestant bodies, you will find such glorious titles as “Disciples of Christ,” “Church of God,” “Christians,” worn as the distinctive cognomen of recent, relatively small, heretical or fanatical bodies, who have largely denounced all sectarianism, for the purpose of building up new sects of the extremest sectarianism, and who reject the testimony of the ages and the confessions of Christendom, for the purpose of putting in their place the private opinion of some pretentious heresiarch of the hour.6

6 Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, 115.

304

Mark Oldenburg

He does, however, answer at length the criticism leveled at confessional churches, that they have made human words (creeds and confessions) superior to the Word of God in Scripture. Krauth distinguishes between the Bible as the rule of faith and creeds as the confession of that faith. The first is divine, the second personal. It is dangerous to use creeds as the rule of faith, but it is disastrous to use the Bible as a confession of faith: The object of a Creed is not to find out what God teaches, (we go to the Bible for that,) but to show what we believe. Hence the moment I set forth even the very words of the Bible as my Creed, the question is no longer what does the Holy Ghost mean by those words, but what do I mean by them.7

Creeds are necessary, not because they replace Scripture but because they make it clear how we understand Scripture. If Scripture is our creed, then Scripture cannot stand outside of and over against our creed. The chapter which most thoroughly represents Krauth’s own work, rather than his work as a collector and arranger of others’ positions, is on “The Confessional Principle of the Conservative Reformation.” Here he outlines and explains the founding principle of the General Council: we heartily acknowledge the [unaltered Augsburg Confession] as a true exhibition of the faith of the [Bible] – a true witness to the one, pure, and unchanging faith of the Christian Church, and freely make it our own Confession, as truly as if it had been now first uttered by our lips, or had now first gone forth from our hands.8

In this chapter, while he never expressly declares it, he is defending the Conservative Reformation from his own matrix, from the nuanced subscription to the Augsburg Confession which Samuel Simon Schmucker advocated. In what was high confessionalism in the early nineteenth century, Schmucker had written into the ordination promises of the General Synod: “Do you believe that the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God, are taught in a manner substantially correct, in the doctrinal articles of the Augsb. Confession?” [italics mine] 9 These adjectives and adverbs allowed, it was claimed, for development of doctrine and private judgment. Krauth would have none of it. Private judgment was not impaired by confessional subscription. No one is forced to claim the label of Lutheranism; if ones private judgment is in conflict with the Augsburg Confession, then one simply need not subscribe to it. In that case, however, one could not truthfully call oneself a Lutheran. Krauth goes on to outline the advantages of the Confession, for unity, continuity, and ministerial preparation. He defends confessionalism against the charge that it is Romanizing. In a most interesting 7 Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, 184. 8 Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, 169. 9 Quoted from Spaeth, Charles Porterfield Krauth, 1:386.

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

305

section, he addresses the charge that requiring subscription, and claiming that Lutheranism is the most faithful and satisfying understanding of Scriptural truth, denies that members of other bodies are Christians. Krauth does not retreat from that requirement or that claim, but argues that it is possible for some true Christians to be in error about, for instance, transubstantiation, and remain Christians, although in others that error will grow to fatally distort their faith. But, especially within the Lutheran church, that error should be addressed rather than accepted or even tolerated: A human body may not only live, but be healthy, in which one lobe of the lungs is gone; another may be sickly and die, in which the lungs are perfect. Nevertheless, the complete lungs are an essential part of a perfect human body… . The man who has lost an arm, we love none the less … [b]ut, when he insists , that, to have two arms, is a blemish, and proposes to cut off one of ours, then we resist him.10

In this chapter, Krauth rallies his arguments for ex animo subscription to the Augsburg Confession in the Lutheran Church. In the introduction to The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, Krauth asserted that the strain of Christianity with the greatest internal consistency and the greatest fervency of support among its members would be the one to subsume all other strains and to spread the Gospel to the whole world. In the rest of the book, he did his best both to prove Lutheranism’s consistency, guaranteed by the Augsburg Confession, and to raise the pride of Lutherans in their own tradition. In these efforts he used not only logical and historical arguments, but piety and occasionally purple prose. The basis Krauth defended in The Conservative Reformation and wrote into the constitution of the General Council was, he hoped, a sufficient one to draw and hold all who subscribed to the Augsburg Confession. In this he was wrong. Most of the synods of newer immigrants either ignored the Fraternal Appeal, or entertained association with the General Council but never actually enlisted. Of the synods without Muhlenberg roots, only the Augustana Synod joined the Council. Others, most especially Iowa and Ohio, asked for further clarification of the Council’s practice and teaching, particularly on what was called the Four Points: chiliasm, secret societies, and pulpit and altar fellowship. The fellowship questions were the most critical, and consumed the most time and energy, of Krauth most especially. The controversy over pulpit and altar fellowship was a long and complicated one. The policy of the General Council was summed up in what came to be known as the Galesburg Rule:

10 Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, 195.

306

Mark Oldenburg

I. THE RULE is: Lutheran pulpits are for Lutheran ministers only. Lutheran altars are for Lutheran communicants only. II. The Exceptions to the rule belong to the sphere of privilege, not of right. III: The Determination of the exceptions is to be made in consonance with these principles, by the conscientious judgment of pastors, as the cases arise. The rule accords with the word of God and with the confessions of our Church.11

Krauth himself articulated the first three articles of the rule from the chair at the 1872 convention in Akron. Also from the chair, he moved the resolution which added the final line at the Galesburg convention in 1874. While several of the Midwestern synods were unsatisfied because the rule allowed exceptions, several of the Eastern synods were rebellious, since it had long been the practice of some of their pastors to invite preachers of other denominations into their pulpits, and to invite communicants of other denominations to the table. There was significant confusion, not least about whether the Galesburg addition did away with the exceptions; Krauth had explained verbally that it did not, but that was not part of the resolution itself. Krauth was in the center of this controversy, receiving and answering voluminous correspondence on the matter, being attacked and defended in the church press. After some delay he wrote a series of articles explaining and defending the Rule for the Lutheran and Missionary. At the 1876 convention of the General Council, Krauth was asked to prepare theses on the matter for discussion at the next convention. In Philadelphia in 1877 he delivered 105 “Theses on the Galesburg Declaration on Pulpit and Altar Fellowship,” some of which were discussed at that gathering.12 Over the next several conventions, selected theses were discussed, but without resolution. These theses, however, are examples of how Krauth practiced theology in public in the midst of a controversy. First of all, he defined several terms. “Rule” was, he declared, not legislative, but aspirational, “educational, not coercive.” Second, to say that it “accords with” Scripture and the Confessions means not simply that it is allowed by them, but rather that it is derived from them. Next, “Lutheran preachers” are those “who have been previously tested in a Lutheran vocation, and are subject to Lutheran discipline.” Similarly, “Lutheran communicants” are those “prepared, tested, and approved as such, in accordance with Lutheran principles and usages, and subject to Lutheran discipline.” Finally, the exceptions, while not defined or explained, would refer to extraordinary cases such as persecution or imminent death, not temporary convenience or social courtesy.

11 Ochsenford, Documentary History of the General Council, 219–20. 12 Reprinted in Ochsenford, A Documentary History of the General Council, 345–76.

Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883)

307

Krauth went on to affirm that the Rule was prepared for and approved at several conventions before Akron and Galesburg, without objection. He noted the various interpretations put on those resolutions across the General Council. Because several synods had instructed their delegates how to vote at upcoming General Councils, he decried stifling free debate, either in the synods or in the Council and the transformation of representatives into “mechanical agencies for carrying into effect foregone conclusions.” And he argued that these important questions should be argued from their principles, not from their practicality. In keeping with that, he declared that Lutheranism must declare that its understandings of the faith are closer to the Word of God than those of other movements and bodies, a declaration which the Augsburg Confession itself makes. He asserted (without argument) that unity in preaching and communing is dependent upon confession of a common creed. Several theses affirmed the importance of preparation and discipline, for both preachers and communicants, responsibilities which could only be exercised within church bodies, not between them. And, of course, Krauth would refer to the practices and writings of orthodox Lutheran divines, especially of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Krauth’s final theses assert that the Word of God must reveal a single system of doctrine, not multiple, equally consistent ones. Denying this, and asserting that Scripture is unclear in its teaching, is the great temptation toward Roman Catholic absolutism and sectarian chaos. Lutheranism does not claim to be the Catholic Church in its totality or the Evangelical Church in its totality, but does claim to be part of it. That claim must be nourished by faithful preaching and an evangelical sacramental life. Admission to the preaching office and to communion without preparation and without discipline overseen by the church militates against that nourishment. “The Rule is not only not in conflict with Christian love, but is demanded by it, for Christian love requires faithful dealing with those who are in error.” What can we glean from these theses about Krauth’s thinking? First of all, his purposes in The Conservative Reformation remain foremost; he is still working to assert the internal consistency of a Lutheran system of doctrine, and to nurture pride in that system. It is a fundamental assertion of these theses that there is a Biblical system of doctrine, and Lutheranism is the clearest exposition of that system. Second, in a way reminiscent of his desire, over against Berkeley, to assert the reality of both mind and matter, he refuses to consider Lutheranism simply as a system of doctrine, but declares it to be a church as well, with both order and discipline. “Lutheran preachers” are not simply preachers who will preach Lutheran doctrine; they are also those who have been subject to the oversight, and remain subject to the discipline, of the Lutheran church. Finally, he is willing to declare his own, fairly recent, practice to be inappropriate (although he does not admit it in the theses). We know that in the early 1860’s, while filling in for Seiss at

308

Mark Oldenburg

his Philadelphia congregation, he invited non-Lutherans to preach. Even as seminary professor, even as Council president, Krauth continued to question and to change his own positions, in keeping with his fundamental beliefs. This essay has examined three products of Krauth’s pen, hoping that they would be exemplary for an understanding of the theologian. There are many others which might have been chosen, and certainly parts of his life which they do not present. In many ways, Krauth was born to be an editor of a newspaper. The Lutheran and Missionary was an outlet for his ruminations and jokes, his poetry and opinions, as well as his controversial works. He remains a pleasure to read. Krauth was also fortunate in his daughter. Harriet Reynolds Krauth was a gifted musician, the editor of the first truly popular Lutheran hymnal with music. She was also an excellent hymn-writer and translator; where her father translated only five hymns, she wrote and translated dozens, several of which are still in use. She was, if her satire published in the Lutheran and Missionary on the reaction to the Galesburg Rule is any indication, herself no mean controversialist. And she wrote the biography of her husband, Krauth’s colleague and friend Adolph Spaeth. One wonders how much of Spaeth’s biography of Krauth comes from her pen rather than his. Krauth had no passion for church unity; he was convinced of the superiority of the Lutheran system and, while he could respect other systems, he considered them defective. That did not stop him, however, from delving deeply, especially into Reformed theology. Nor did it keep him from having close and intimate friendships with other pastors and theologians. Krauth had no passion for social justice or philanthropy. Unlike his friend and colleague Passavant, he was not involved in establishing hospitals, orphanages, and schools. Unlike his professor S.S. Schmucker, he did not join in the Benevolent Empire, lending his name and efforts to movements for social improvement, such as public education, anti-slavery, temperance, or women’s rights. While he was relieved to move from Virginia to Pennsylvania in order to escape the institution of slavery, he did not write or, from all reports, preach against that institution. Unlike his friend, colleague, and son-in–law Spaeth, he did not support Lankenau Hospital, or the deaconess community which was established to nurse there. What Krauth did, however, was to preserve for the American scene a theological voice distinct from the revivalist/Reformed norm of Protestantism. More than any other figure writing in English, he was able to make Lutheranism speak in ways convicting to Lutherans and respectable to non-Lutherans. He assured that the Augsburg Confession and the Book of Concord were living documents, providing insight, encouragement, and structure centuries after their composition and thousands of miles from their origin. To him, more than to any other figure, the Muhlenberg tradition of American Lutheranism at least owes the fact that it has a unique perspective to offer in the twenty-first century.

Carl E. Braaten

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

Martin Kähler was a German Lutheran professor of systematic theology who spent his entire teaching career at the University of Halle (1860–1912), except for a brief interim at the University of Bonn (1864–67). He was born in 1835 in East Prussia, the same year that David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) scandalized German theology with the publication of his Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, in which he explained away all the miracles of Jesus as myths cast as real historical events. As a youth Kähler was deeply moved by the poetry of Goethe and Schiller. The philosophy of classical German Idealism formed the core of his formal education. Of his student days he said: “I swallowed down Spinoza and read Kant, Schelling, and Hegel.”1

Theological Education Kähler entered the University of Halle to study law, but transferred to the faculty of theology on the occasion of a serious illness. During his illness Kähler realized that he had not gained from the Romanic poets and humanist culture a firm basis for the assurance of eternal life. In this crisis of life Paul Gerhardt’s hymns gained new meaning for him, for they centered worship on the living God manifest in Jesus Christ. In his later life Kähler became convinced that the culture represented by Goethe and the Romantic movement signaled a relapse into paganism, the innermost essence of which is pantheism, the divinization of the world of nature. Kähler studied theology at the universities of Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Halle. He was able to attend the lectures of some of the greatest of German theologians. At Heidelberg he encountered Richard Rothe (1813–85), a systematic theologian greatly influenced by the speculative metaphysics of Hegel. Kähler owed it to Rothe that he became engaged in the fundamental questions of 1 Quoted by Franz Spemann, “Zur Lebensarbeit Martin Kählers,” Die Furche 9 (1918): 330.

310

Carl E. Braaten

theology. Rothe introduced Kähler to the New Testament studies of the Tübingen School under Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860). Of this experience Kähler opined, “This cold water bath was the beginning of my serious studies.”2 Later Kähler became a staunch critic of Rothe, in particular because he believed that Rothe’s theosophical speculations distorted the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo in terms of pantheistic emanationism.3 Also Rothe’s lectures on the “Life of Jesus” planted the seeds in Kähler’s mind that resulted in his wholesale rejection of the modern “quest of the historical Jesus.” More on this later. From Heidelberg Kähler went to Halle University, where he attended lectures by Julius Müller (1801–78) and August Tholuck (1799–1877), who together espoused the chief principles of the Reformation—the doctrines of sin and grace, justification by faith alone, and the vicarious atonement—in a lively and powerful way. Kähler referred to Müller as his most respected teacher. He learned from him the importance of the personal and experiential dimensions of life over against the abstractions of Idealism. Tholuck chose Kähler as his amanuensis, with the intention of opening for him a pathway to an academic position. Tholuck and Müller were called “mediating theologians” because they correlated their interpretation of the traditional doctrines of the Lutheran Confessions with the challenges posed by modern historical criticism of the biblical sources. Hence, they took up the gauntlet laid down by negative critics of the Bible, and sought to defend the reliability of traditional views of the Bible on literary and historical grounds. Unlike the orthodox Lutherans and the biblicist Pietists, mediating theologians did not base their views on the doctrine of verbal inspiration of the Bible. Because of his affinity with the views of his two Halle professors, Kähler was also called a mediating theologian. From Halle Kähler transferred to Tübingen at a time when the popularity of Ferdinand Christian Baur was being replaced by that of Johann Tobias Beck (1804–78). Students filled Beck’s classroom because his powerful rhetoric confronted them directly with the biblical message apart from innumerable literary and historical references. Although Kähler was not able to affirm Beck’s kind of “biblical realism” that avoided critical problems by recourse to a “pneumatic exegesis,” he acknowledged that to Beck he owed not only his love for the Bible but also his confidence in the truth of biblical revelation. 2 Anna Kähler, ed., Theologe und Christ. Erinnerungen und Bekentnisse von Martin Kähler (Berlin: Furche Verlag, 1926), 89. 3 Theosophy was well represented by a long line of Lutheran theologians, including Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) and Johann Arndt (1555–1621), in the wake of the Reformation, and kept alive by Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714), Friedrich Christoph Oetingen (1702–1782), and Franz von Baader (1765–1841), among others. Elements of this speculative theosophy reached Paul J. Tillich (1886–1965) through the influence of Friedrich William Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), both Lutheran theologians.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

311

From Tübingen Kähler returned to Halle to complete his doctoral dissertation on the biblical idea of conscience under the supervision of August Tholuck. Except for three years as Privatdozent in Bonn (1864–67), Kähler spent the rest of his days teaching at the University of Halle. His appointment to a professorship at the age of forty-four had been blocked because his liberal theological opponents labelled him as a biblicist and Pietist, unforgivable sins for those in the school of Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89). To the right the orthodox Lutherans branded him as a unionist. Kähler was critical of their tendency to bring polemical points of dogma into the pulpit as gospel truth. Kähler died in 1912 at the age of seventy-seven, leaving a request that the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae—that is, the article of justification by which the church stands or falls—be inscribed on his grave stone. As we shall see, the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone was not only central in Kähler’s faith and life but also the structuring principle of his one-volume work of Christian dogmatics.

Against the “Life of Jesus” Movement Kähler’s place of pre-eminence in the history of modern theology is due largely to his provocative assault on the nineteenth-century Life-of-Jesus movement, documented in his famous book, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus.4 Kähler exposed the failure of the attempt of historical criticism to establish who Jesus really was, in distinction from the way the four Gospels portrayed him, and he did this years before Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) wrote his more highly publicized Geschichte der Leben-JesuForschung.5 Kähler denied that the Gospels can be used as sources for a scientifically reconstructed biography of Jesus. He rejected the idea that critical historiography is able to establish the naked facts about Jesus’ life and teachings by separating out the memories and interpretations of his closest friends and followers who believed in him as more than a man. Kähler directed his criticism at both negative and positive critics. Admittedly there were negative critics such as D.F. Strauss and Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) who 4 Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, ed. and trans. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964). This edition includes only the first two chapters of the German publication, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus. My translation of the complete German edition, containing four chapters, appears in the library of Harvard Divinity School, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Th.D. 5 See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W. Montgomery (London: Adam & Charles Black, Ltd., 1910).

312

Carl E. Braaten

aimed to refute the historical foundations on which traditional Christianity claimed to stand. However, Kähler objected equally to positive critics such as Willibald Beyschlag (1823–1900) and Heinrich J. Holtzmann (1832–1910), whose use of the historical critical method to reconstruct the human personality of Jesus was intended to take seriously the true humanity of Jesus Christ, counterbalancing the tendency of traditional dogmatics to over-stress his divine nature. Kähler did acknowledge that Christian faith does have an essential interest in the true humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, but he did not concede that this interest could be decisively satisfied by the results of modern historical scholarship. After all, the ancient creedal confession that Jesus Christ is vere homo was the achievement not of historical scholarship but of the theological insight of the antiGnostic Fathers (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian) of the second century. For Kähler the confession of the true humanity of Jesus Christ was an immediate datum of the knowledge of faith in the Word made flesh, a confession freshly renewed in the living voice of the gospel through the ongoing preaching of the church. Kähler’s polemic against the “Life of Jesus” movement was not in the first place an apologetic defense of the dogmatic Christ of the Creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. To the extent that modern biographers drew attention to the real flesh and blood experience of Jesus as a real human being, Kähler said they are completely in the right. That can be affirmed as an echo of Luther’s dictum “that we can never draw God’s Son deeply enough into our flesh, into our humanity.”6 As far as Kähler was concerned, the humanity of the Son of God cannot be overly emphasized. Kähler expressed his concern in these words: The historical Jesus of modern authors veils from us the living Christ. The Jesus of the “Life of Jesus” movement is only a variant of the productions of human inventive art, and it is no better than the notorious Christ of Byzantine Christology. Both of them are equally remote from the real Christ.7

The German language has two different words for history—Historie and Geschichte—which Kähler used to express his thought. The title of his book on Jesus contains the words “historische” and “geschichtliche.” The “historische” Jesus is set in contrast to the “geschichtliche” Christ. What is the meaning of this difference? And does it make good theological sense? The “historische” Jesus, as Kähler used the term, is Jesus in so far as he can be made the object of historical research. Scholars who apply the historical critical method attempt to divest it of all presuppositions and prejudices, and to lay bare the objective facts, whatever value individuals may wish to attach to them. Presumably the facts should be the 6 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 46. 7 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 43.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

313

same for believers and non-believers, for Christians, agnostics, or atheists. The “geschichtliche” Jesus is the living Christ in the preaching of the apostles, received by faith, acknowledged as Lord, and worshipped as God. The problem that became acute for theology after Kähler was how best to define the relationship between the two concepts, that is, between Jesus as an historische figure of the past and Jesus as the geschichtliche Christ living in the faith of today. The “historische” Jesus is a child of the Enlightenment, created by the application of historical and source critical methods in Gospel research. Originally the rationalist scholars of the Enlightenment intended merely to contrast the biblical Christ with the dogmatic Christ of orthodox Christianity. They were also quite willing to attribute a unique meaning to the religion of Jesus and his moral teachings. The great theologians of German Protestant theology reached no consensus in their portrayals of Jesus. Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher (1768– 1834) placed the accent on the potency of Jesus’ God-consciousness. Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) saw in Jesus a supreme expression of the Idea of the essential unity of God and man. Later liberal theology found its most prolific and eloquent exponent in Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who characterized Jesus as the preacher of the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the individual soul.8 Kähler wrote a series of essays against Harnack’s main Christological thesis that we do justice to Jesus’ personal religion when we worship the Father with Jesus and not through Jesus.9 “I regard the entire ‘Life of Jesus’ movement as being a blind alley.”10 With these words Kähler sounded the alarm that signaled a large scale response after World War I. The combined impact of Form Criticism and Dialectical Theology supported Kähler’s judgment that, given the nature of the Gospel writings, it is not possible to produce historico-scientific monographs on Jesus of Nazareth. Leading Form Critics such as Martin Dibelius (1883–1947) and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) attempted to rediscover the original meaning of what the Gospels say about Jesus, convinced that what they say are primarily reflections of the memories of the early communities of faith that produced them. Dialectical theology represented by Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Emil Brunner (1889–1966) agreed with Kähler’s rejection of the whole “Life of Jesus” movement. Barth wrote,

8 Adolf von Harnack’s famous book is entitled, Das Wesen des Christentums (1900; ET: What Is Christianity? trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders [1901; reprint: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986]). 9 The essays Kähler wrote to refute Harnack’s Christology are suggestive in themselves: Gehört Jesus in das Evangelium? [Does Jesus belong in the Gospel?]; Heroenverehrung und Jesusglaube [Hero-Worship and Jesus-Faith]; Die Herrlichkeit Jesus [The Lordship of Jesus]; Das Bekenntnis zur Gottheit Christi [The Confession of the Divinity of Christ]. 10 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 46.

314

Carl E. Braaten

It is an abiding merit of Martin Kähler, which cannot be over-praised, that in his work Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, 1892—at a time when it cost something to say so—he called the whole ‘Life of Jesus movement’ in plain language a ‘wrong way.’11

Their reasons to reject the modern quest of the historical Jesus were the same as Kähler’s—historical, theological, and apologetic.

The Nature of the Gospels From the standpoint of historical scholarship it is doubtful that the historical facts concerning Jesus can be separated out from the interpretations of faith given in the Gospels. Theologically, the quest for the historical Jesus is unworthy because it seeks to discover a real historical figure whose true identity is other than the incarnate Word of God, the risen and exalted Son of God, as he is pictured in the Gospels. As Barth said, the modern quest is “chasing the ghost of an historical Jesus in the vacuum behind the New Testament.”12 Apologetically, the dialectical theologians shared Kähler’s concern not to make the knowledge and assurance of faith dependent on the ever fluctuating results of historical research. Kähler and Schweitzer, independently of each other and precisely at the same time, showed that modern biographers and historians for all their sincere efforts reached no consensus in portraying the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Kähler was not an opponent of the historical critical method per se. For him there was no necessary animosity of faith towards historical science, higher and lower criticism of Scripture, and their findings. The criterion he held up was simply honesty, that is, to state the truth as one sees it, irrespective of labels or party associations. Kähler’s rejection of the supposedly pure scientific search for the real historical Jesus was not based on dogmatic arrogance, as some of his biblical critics alleged, for example, Willibald Beyschlag. Kähler’s strictures against the “so-called historical Jesus” were in fact supported by historical arguments. He asserted: We do not possess any sources for a ‘Life of Jesus’ which an historian can accept as reliable and adequate. I stress: we have no sources for a biography of Jesus of Nazareth which measure up to the standards of contemporary historical science. A trustworthy picture of the Savior for believers is a very different thing.13

11 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G.T. Thomson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956), I/2, 64. 12 Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, 64–65. 13 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 48.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

315

Kähler offers four literary-critical observations to support his thesis. First, he asserted that the four Gospels are our only sources and that apart from them we would know nothing of Jesus’ life at all. In light of the discovery of Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi we now know that such an assertion cannot be sustained. Second, there is no scholarly consensus that the Gospels can be traced back to eyewitnesses. Third, the Gospels deal mainly with the final period of Jesus’ life. Kähler is often quoted for his saying, “One could call the Gospels passion narratives with extended introductions.”14 Kähler charged that the “Lives of Jesus” were mostly products of the imagination of their authors. The biographers wrote about the childhood of Jesus and his psychological development, even though the Gospels are totally silent about such things. Fourth, the fact that the reports about Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are so greatly different in form from those in the Gospel of John gives rise to the question of which is more reliable. In Kähler’s day some scholars still maintained that John’s Gospel is historically more trustworthy than the Synoptics. Kähler, like Schweitzer, was particularly critical of the attempts to use modern psychology to analyze Jesus’ mental and spiritual development. Schweitzer wrote, In the sixties psychology became more confident and Jesus smaller; at the close of the century the confidence of psychology is at its greatest and the figure of Jesus at its smallest.15

In a similar way Kähler observed that the biographers used psychology “to rummage around in the inner life of Jesus” and to analyze “the consciousness of the God-Man.”16 Kähler’s hermeneutical principle was simple and straightforward: Scholars should interpret the biblical sources in light of the purpose for which they were created. The Gospels do not delve into the psychology of the Messiah, nor do they tell us anything about the development of Jesus’ messianic consciousness from the manger to the cross. The Jesus scholars were guilty of going behind the sources, reading between the lines, and foisting upon the texts preconceived ideas regarding religious and ethical matters. The consequence, Kähler said, was that modern historiographers constructed “the historical Jesus” in their own image. That is why Kähler used the derogatory term “the so-called historical Jesus.” If the New Testament writings are not suitable to produce a biography of Jesus or a psychology of his inner life, they are, in Kähler’s view, trustworthy documentary sources that re-present the preaching that established the church. The New Testament writings are the oldest records of what the apostles and evan14 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 80 (n.1). 15 Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 309. 16 Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, trans. Carl E. Braaten (Harvard Divinity Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 169, 178.

316

Carl E. Braaten

gelists recollected about Jesus in light of their post-resurrection experiences of him. Every piece of the Gospel tradition was selected and preserved for the purpose of the Spirit-inspired preaching that creates faith. The preaching of the apostles was empowered by the conviction that after Jesus’ death they encountered him as the risen Lord. We receive from the apostles not a history of Jesus but a picture of Jesus as the Messiah wherein historical and supra-historical elements have been inextricably interwoven. This basic insight of Kähler anticipated concepts that later became common currency in theological discourse. The following familiar phrases abound in Kähler’s writings, some more, some less frequently: “the picture [das Bild] of Jesus as the Christ,” “the apostolic kerygma,” “the New Testament writings as confessional documents,” “the Christ of apostolic preaching,” “the faith of the community,” “the meaning of Christ,” “the supra-historical Savior,” “the proclamation of the church,” “the proclamation of the Messiahship of the crucified Jesus,” “apostolic recollections,” “confessional proclamations,” “the risen Lord,” and so on.

Christology Kähler’s repudiation of the “Life of Jesus” movement was ultimately based on Christology. The ontological structure of the person of Jesus the Christ frustrates the application of historical and psychological methods otherwise appropriate to describe human reality and experience. The “Life of Jesus” theologians answered the question of who Jesus Christ actually is by stripping away the dogmatic vestments of faith by which he is clothed in the Bible and church tradition. It became clear to Kähler that if the historical Jesus of modern scholarship was the real Jesus, Christianity for the last nineteen hundred years would have committed the sin of idolatry, worshipping a mere creature rather than the Creator, man instead of God. Even liberal Christianity’s reverence for Jesus would have amounted to idolatrous hero-worship, Jesuology rather than Christology. Kähler’s break with the liberal theology of Albrecht Ritschl was due to his refusal to worship as God someone ontologically sub-divine. Ritschl’s answer to the accusation that he taught Jesus was a mere man was that he never called anyone a mere man, and if not anyone, then certainly not Jesus. Kähler would not abandon the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. The confession of the divinity of Christ means for us that he may be the object of faith without this faith’s coming into conflict with the First Commandment and without its leading to deification of the creature. Those who claimed to apply the methods of historical science in their research assumed that Jesus is a mere man (purus putus homo). If this is not assumed, then the entire quest of the historical Jesus must be abandoned. Why so? Simply because, Kähler said, a biography

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

317

cannot be written without the principle of analogy, psychological or historical, a principle that is only valid among equals. If, however, Jesus the Christ is more than primus inter pares, the analogy principle loses it applicability. As Kähler defined the problem, historical scientific research must assume that Jesus is only a human being, whatever superlatives it may wish to attach to his personality, whereas, on the contrary, Christian dogmatics, in faithfulness to the New Testament gospel, affirms that Jesus is more than a man. Does this mean that there is necessarily a relation of mutual hostility between the historical method and Christian dogmatics? Kähler did not settle for that. Rather, he argued that the quest of the historical Jesus is not only inimical to Christian faith, it is also invalidated on purely historico-scientific grounds. A biography of Jesus is prohibited by the nature of the sources, and the only source documents available to historians depict the person of Jesus as unique. What is so unique about Jesus? Kähler answered, the sinlessness of Jesus, as all the New Testament witnesses affirm. If this is taken seriously, the historian will of necessity acknowledge the incommensurability of the analogy principle so essential for biography. The full humanity of Jesus implies that the forms of his inner life are the same as those of all other human beings, but at the same time his sinlessness invalidates the principle of analogy with respect to the contents of his lived experience. Kähler said, in one of his memorable assertions, “Sinlessness is not merely a negative concept. The inner development of a sinless person is as inconceivable to us as life on the Sandwich Islands is to a Laplander.”17 In continuity with the Christology of the ancient church Kähler emphasized not only Jesus’ likeness to us but also his unlikeness. “The distinction between Jesus Christ and ourselves is not one of degree but of kind.”18

Justification by Faith Martin Kähler referred to himself as the defense attorney for the simple Christian. The most learned theologian has no advantage over the simplest Christian when it comes to faith and its relation to Christ. The task of the dogmatician is to preserve the Christian laity from what he called “the papacy of scholarship.”19 The results of Jesus-research can never provide the basis and content of Christian faith. Even the most positive results in the hands of a conservative orthodox historical theologian cannot mediate to the believer the real, living, biblical Christ 17 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 53. 18 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 53. 19 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (version in the Harvard Divinity School Library), 193.

318

Carl E. Braaten

of faith, who is always at the same time the crucified and risen earthly Jesus. Christian faith must not be made dependent on the always fluctuating results of historical science. Neither the basis nor the content of faith can be secured by the always more or less probable findings of historical scholarship. Historical facts established with a high degree of probability cannot guarantee access to the living Christ of faith. To buttress his argument Kähler invoked the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in the Word alone. The reality of salvation is never dependent on the preparatory works of humans, whether moral, religious, or intellectual, whether historical, philosophical, or theological. Historical research is a human work that requires serious and exacting effort. The soteriological motive that compelled Luther to affirm the priority of faith over “works of the law” led Kähler to stress faith’s non-dependence on the oscillating opinions of historians. Faith cannot be based on a great uncertainty, whether of an ethical or noetic nature. The revelation of God in Christ would hardly be the power unto salvation if at the crucial point of mediation it became caught in the crossfire of arguments and counter-arguments of scientific historical research. Here the soteriological chain is only as strong as its weakest link. To my knowledge Kähler was the first Protestant theologian to perceive such methodological implications of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. Kähler restored this doctrine to a position of dogmatic centrality. Its profound meaning militates against the authoritarianism (Autoritätsglauben) of Roman Catholicism, but also against that of orthodox Protestantism, pietistic biblicism, and scientific historicism. All of these aberrant forms of Christianity lead the Christian laity into a false dependence on authorities that obstruct faith’s free and immediate access to the revealed God in Christ. The access of faith to the historic (geschichtliche) biblical Christ must be such that faith does not rely on guarantees created by external authorities. If faith is to be free and not dependent on a system of assurances based on ecclesiastical or scientific authorities, there must exist an “invulnerable area” (Sturmfreies Gebiet) from which faith can gain its certainty. Kähler’s idea of an “invulnerable area” was controversial in his day and sharply criticized by Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923). Troeltsch wrote that “it is merely a figure of speech when one (namely, Kähler) says that simple faith cannot be made dependent upon scholars and professors.”20 Troeltsch argued that maintaining the centrality of Jesus in Christian worship and trust in him as the revelation of God is dependent on historical critical research, on scientific demonstrations of the historicity of Jesus and the main characteristics of his preaching and his religious personality. 20 Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1929), 34.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

319

If Jesus is an historical fact, he is, like all other historical facts, subject to the methods of historical research and faith’s estimation of him must wait upon the results of historical science.21 In this view there is no other access to the knowledge of Jesus portrayed in the New Testament than through the arduous and piecemeal labors of competent historians. Troeltsch’s position is as opposite to Kähler’s as is possible to conceive. Whereas Troeltsch claims that it would be the beginning of the end of Christianity should historical science deliver a negative judgment as to the historicity and knowability of Jesus, Kähler, to the contrary, states that “there must be another way to reach the historic Christ than that of scientific reconstructions which employ source criticism and historical analogy.”22 Kähler was aware that his historical and theological judgments would receive a sympathetic response only within the community of those whose meaning in life is bound up with the history of God’s revelation in Jesus as he is recounted in the New Testament. Kähler explained what he meant by an “invulnerable area” for the assurance of faith by distinguishing his position from those which he called subjectivistic or objectivistic. Representatives of these views were also seeking an “invulnerable area,” one which could provide faith with the assurance of eternal salvation. Kähler was wrestling with the problem formulated by Sören Kierkegaard (1813– 55): “How can something of an historical nature be decisive for eternal happiness?” Or, “Is it possible to base an eternal happiness on historical knowledge?”23 Kierkegaard was reflecting on the problem of historical relativism that bedeviled theology for the entire nineteenth century. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) laid down the gauntlet with his sharp distinction between accidental truths of history and eternal truths of reason. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810–77), and Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) were identified by Kähler as representatives of subjectivism, though in different ways. For Kähler the essence of subjectivism is the idea that faith is generative or productive of its own contents (Glaubensgedanken), and that Scripture and church tradition are treated later to confirm or prove what faith already knows beforehand. As representatives of objectivism Kähler cites positivistic historicism, Protestant Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism. The essence of objectivism for Kähler is the appeal to external authorities to support the relation between the Christian and Christ. All objective supports called upon to authorize the assurance of faith are false. Kähler’s criticisms of subjectivism and objectivism, as he termed them, were 21 Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben, 32–35. 22 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 63. 23 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 86.

320

Carl E. Braaten

based on his understanding of the epistemological implications of justification by faith alone. If the justifying act of God is thought to stand in a necessary relation of dependence on a system of objective guarantees, then justification is not by faith alone. The doctrine of justification by faith is the enemy of every kind of authoritarian belief system (Autoritätsglauben). Kähler was a Lutheran theologian but nevertheless was dismissed by orthodox Lutheran theologians as having “degenerated to the ranks of rationalistic professors” because he did “not accept the old doctrine of inspiration.”24 Kähler was fully committed to the authority of Scripture, but at the same time he was convinced that the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration by the dictation of the Holy Spirit actually undermined it. Kähler found the doctrine of Scripture’s inerrancy problematic because faith in the revelation of God is bound up with the trustworthiness of every recorded detail.25 Kähler was a systematic theologian. He made the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith the point of departure and structuring principle of his onevolume dogmatics, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre. His system was divided into three parts: (1) Christian Apologetics, concerning the presuppositions of justifying faith; (2) Evangelical Dogmatics, concerning the object of justifying faith; and (3) Theological Ethics, concerning the moral acts of justifying faith. Justifying faith is hence the methodological center of theological understanding. It is the justified sinner who gives an account of his justification by pointing to the objective ground and source of his experience of justification. The task of the theologian is to describe as accurately as possible the presuppositions, the contents, and the moral imperatives of justifying faith. For knowledge of God to be Christian it must be based on a living faith in God who reveals himself in Christ. Kähler rejected the idea advocated by Richard Rothe, his systematics professor, of an “unconscious Christianity,” by which he meant that one can know the Father without knowing him through the Son. Kähler’s response was: To accept, as some do, a Christianity which has no conscious relation to Christ is to cut the Gordian knot….This is not the Christianity of the apostles or the reformers.26

Faith is the necessary presupposition of theological knowledge because faith has as its objective correlate that which infinitely transcends history while at the same

24 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (version in the Harvard Divinity School Library), vi. Kähler refers here to the Neuen Lutherischen Kirchenzeitung (Kropp, 1892, Nr. 7, 9, 10). 25 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 114. 26 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (version in the Harvard Divinity School Library), 193, 194.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

321

time being manifest only as history.27 Kähler calls this phenomenon of revelatory history the Supra-historical (Übergeschichtliche). The supra-historical Reality, knowable by faith, is God who acts and is revealed in Christ. Kähler writes in his dogmatics: Christ is the object of faith on the one hand as the recapitulative content of the whole history of revelation, and on the other hand as the presently effective mediator of our communion with God.28

Faith is related to the supra-historical reality of God because he has entered into history and is now knowable exclusively through faith in the historic biblical Christ. This is why Kähler could affirm that theology can only undertake the examination of historical revelation.

Word and Spirit Because faith is called into being by an eternal Word that touches down in history, the Word made flesh, theology must lay claim to its own method. Theology must never rely on second-hand judgments about the nature and meaning of that history by which faith has entered into living communion with God in Christ. So Kähler says: “Neither the psychological or anthropological empirical research nor an ontological metaphysics or one based on ethics can do justice to the historical problem of Christianity.”29 We can read between the lines that he was defining his methodology over against his contemporaries indebted to the systems of Schleiermacher (e. g., Wilhelm Herrmann), Hegel (e. g., Richard Rothe), and Kant (e. g., Albrecht Ritschl). As a kind of heilsgechichtliche theologian Kähler never reduced revelation to the single historical fact of Jesus of Nazareth. In opposing the view of Wilhelm Herrmann for whom the time of preparation (the Old Testament) possessed no positive revelatory significance, Kähler stated that Jesus is the Christ of the whole Bible, that he stands connected to both sides of his own history, the Old Testament prophets, on the side, and the New Testament apostles, on the other side. Kähler wrote a pamphlet, “Jesus and the Old Testament,” in which he was very critical of the Marcionite tendency of nineteenth-century German Protestant theology, from Schleiermacher to Harnack.30 In his dogmatics classic, The 27 Martin Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre von dem evangelischen Grundartikel aus, im Abrisse dargestellt, 3rd ed. (Erlangen: Deichert, 1905), 13. 28 Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 13. 29 Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 12. 30 Martin Kähler, Dogmatische Zeitfragen. Alte und neue Ausführungen zur Wissenschaft der christlichen, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Deichert, 1898).

322

Carl E. Braaten

Christian Faith, Schleiermacher formulated this position which later exerted an enormous influence on the theology of the “German Christians” during the period of the holocaust: Christianity does indeed stand in a special historical connection with Judaism, but so far as concerns its historical existence and aims, its relation to Judaism and Heathenism are the same.31

Harnack wrote in the same vein: To repudiate the Old Testament in the second century was an error which the great church rightly opposed; holding on to it in the sixteenth century was a destiny which the Reformation was not able to escape; but for Protestantism to preserve it since the nineteenth century as a canonical document is the result of religious and ecclesiastical paralysis.32

If faith is the essential presupposition for Christian knowledge of God, the question arises, where does this faith come from? Another form of the question is: How does Jesus as a figure of past history become a living reality today? Kähler’s answer was that Jesus becomes present and alive in the experience of faith today through the witness of the Holy Spirit. Faith’s judgment of the saving power and meaning of the biblical Christ is not a human possibility apart from the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. The Supra-historical power of God entered into the life and ministry of Jesus and became an effective redeeming presence by the mediation of the Holy Spirit. Kähler writes: If the communication of the Spirit brings the mind of Christ into our hearts, together with the discernment which that gift brings (1 Cor. 2:15, 16), then our minds are opened to what in Jesus’ person and work are ‘of the Spirit’.33

The Holy Spirit brings faith and Christ together by raising the historic biblical Christ out of the remoteness of past history and placing him into the context of every historical present as the living risen Christ. For Kähler the work of the Holy Spirit is mediated through the preaching of the Word of God. The role of the Holy Spirit in the ongoing work of reconciliation is centered in the living voice of the gospel (viva vox evangelii).34 Under the influence of the Holy Spirit (testimonium spiritus sancti internum) the justified sinner becomes conscious that his faith in the living Christ is called into being through the efficacious Word of God. Like 31 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh, and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), 90. 32 Quoted from Hans Joachim Kraus, Geschichte des historish-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Neukirchen: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1956), 351. 33 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 91 34 Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 37.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

323

Luther Kähler was careful to avoid what he called an “enthusiastic misunderstanding” of the role of the Holy Spirit (Schwärmerei). This means for Kähler that the Christ of faith “is not someone known only within his own experience or imagination. He is rather the One who is preached to him.”35 The preaching of the Word that awakens faith in the power of the Spirit is performed within the context of the church. Apart from the community of believers in Christ there is no preaching which has the power to awaken faith.36 The criterion of true Christian preaching is Christological, or as Kähler preferred to say, Soterological, the doctrine of the Jesus as Savior.37 Other manifestations of interest in Jesus of Nazareth, for example, the biographical or psychological studies of modern historical scholarship, are powerless to create faith. When a person enters the church, he hears resounding everywhere: God comes to you in the Word. His Word, spoken for millennia and through the centuries, tells you of his action and of his deeds and this Word is his own activity. In this Word you can come to know him.38

Kähler’s search for an “invulnerable area” for faith that is not dependent on external props or heteronomous authorities included the place of the church in God’s plan of salvation. He wrote, Such an invulnerable area can only exist within the ‘congregation of all believers’….The church is that sphere within humanity in which God personally indwells in his Spirit.39

Authority of Scripture The preaching of Christ going on within and by the church today must be dependent on and faithful to the apostolic testimonies of the earliest Christian community recorded in the New Testament. The preaching of the first witnesses of faith was handed on to later generations in the New Testament writings and apart from them Jesus would not be recognized and confessed as Lord and Savior. Every living word of preaching in the church directly or indirectly owes its substance and inspiration from the Bible. The biblical writings are “the great source and fountain of renewal for the preaching by which Christianity has grown 35 36 37 38

Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 76. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 365, 368. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 312ff. Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (version in the Harvard Divinity School Library), 237. 39 Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (version in the Harvard Divinity School Library), 270, 375.

324

Carl E. Braaten

ever since and, when necessary, has been revived.”40 Our faith today is dependent only on the Christ who encounters us in the picture transmitted by the preaching of the apostles. Kähler was a kerygmatic theologian before Rudolf Bultmann popularized the term “kerygma” as definitive of the essence of Christianity. He wrote, It is as kerygma, as a deliverance of the divine commission to his heralds and messengers, that the ancient word of Scripture acquires its significance in the church.41

The church’s judgment that the Bible is “the unchangeable form of the divine Word”42 rests upon its continuous experience that this book mediates the power of the Word to create and preserve, to judge and renew the church and all its members.43 The church has learned from experience to evaluate the Old and New Testaments as the abiding written form of the Word of God (verbum dei scriptum),44 to regard it as the critical criterion of church instruction (auctoritas normativa), and as the source of the preaching which awakens faith and establishes the church (auctoritas causativa).45 For Kähler everything recorded in the Bible and everything the church teaches must be interpreted in light of its connection with the mid-point of revelation, and this has always been the appearance of Jesus the Christ, first in history, then in the apostolic preaching, and now in the life of the church and every believer.46 The kerygmatic message of the Bible as the Word of God makes clear that its authority does not require historico-scientific legitimation. The message is selfauthenticating; it does not need supports offered by supernaturalist historians or the theory of verbal inspiration. The authority of the Bible should be thought of primarily as a creative authority (auctoritas efficiens fidem). The Bible is instrumental in authoring faith. This creative authority is the basis of the judiciary authority of the Bible in the church (auctoritas iudicativa).47 Kähler refused to use the terms “infallible” and “inerrant” to describe the Bible. He preferred to affirm the perfection of the Scriptures with respect to their purpose (perfectio respectu finis) and also the clarity of the Scriptures (perspecuitas scriptorum). What is their purpose? They are the means by which the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the church aims to bring the whole of humanity into a saving relation to the living God revealed in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 128–129. Kähler, The So-Called, Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 131. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 48 Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 370. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 50. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 50. Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 50, 370. Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 137.

Martin Kähler (1835–1912)

325

Mission: The Mother of Theology The University of Halle was one of the great centers of the modern missionary movement, inspired by the principal promoters of Pietism, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), and Count Nicholaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760). Kähler was a champion of the missionary movement. As a missiologist he reinforced the great Halle tradition as a center of the worldwide Christian mission to Asia and Africa. Kähler is well remembered for saying, “Mission is the mother of theology.”48 He acknowledged that the original matrix of Christian theology is the missionary church. The first apostles of Jesus were all missionaries. The Book of Acts records their missionary activities. Kähler gave a distinct place to the idea of the Christian mission in his systematic theology.49 Others like Albrecht Ritschl did not even mention it. For Kähler mission belonged to the essence of Christianity, and was not merely one of its chance historical manifestations. The mission of Christ’s church is rooted in the gospel which, for Kähler, is the supra-historical Word of God which as such occurs in history without being reducible to it. The message of the gospel must be clearly distinguished from propaganda of an earthly institution, because the missionary message originates in the eternal mind of God. Kähler believed it presumptuous to promote the Christian mission to the nations in the interest of expanding the colonial influence of Western European nations. The decisive theological question is whether Christianity has been given a supra-historical message valid for every nation and religion, something which can truly be called the “Word of God.” Apart from that Christian churches have no right to claim superiority over other religions. The motive of mission is to share the message of the world’s salvation through the atoning cross of Christ. In the biblical sense salvation means more than cultural development to a higher plane. The gospel, as Kähler understood it, is the gift of eternal salvation, not a goad to social improvement. The evangelical core of the concern of Pietism for “winning souls for Christ” was accentuated by Kähler, even though he could be critical of its individualistic emphasis and biblical literalism. There is little justification for Christianity to aim to convert people of other religious persuasions unless it has a God-given message of eternal value offering the gift of salvation meant for all people. Otherwise the Christian message becomes cultural propaganda and religious imperialism. Kähler’s con48 Martin Kähler, “Die Mission—ist sie ein unentbehrlicher Zug am Christentum?” Schriften zu Christologie und Mission (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), 190. 49 The most important of Kähler’s writings on mission are: Der Menschensohn und seine Sendung an die Menschheit; Die Bedeutung der Mission fur Leben und Lehre der Kicrche; Weltversohnung und Weltmission. These can be found in a volume of his writings on mission, Schriften zu Christologie und Mission (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971).

326

Carl E. Braaten

tribution to a theology of the Christian mission was to purge it of its secondary cultural accretions. He articulated the spirit and vision of the first apostles whose sole reason for mission was the word and command of the Lord. Kähler brought relentless criticism to bear on the competing notion of mission that reached its zenith in the thought of Ernst Troeltsch. Troeltsch was the systematic theologian of the History-of-Religions School. He advocated a new view of Christianity that would leave aside all dogmatism, supernaturalism, absolutism, and exclusivism. All religions, including Christianity, were to be studied from a strictly historical point of view. The results brought not only a new assessment of the biblical origins of Christianity, but also a new concept of the relation between Christianity and the other religions and of the way in which God works through all of them. For Troeltsch, in contrast to Kähler, God’s revelation in the Bible and through Jesus Christ represents only one stage in the universal history of God’s revelation in the religions. There can be no absolute religion in the midst of the relativities of history. The Absolute lies at the end of history, and only then can a final judgment on the religions be made. Christianity does not represent a category different from other religions, but it does show itself to be relatively higher through its historical success, spiritual power, and rationality. From Kähler’s point of view Troeltsch’s theology of religion offers too slender a thread on which to hang the Christian mission to the nations and religions of the world. In the end Troeltsch views Christianity as the religion of Europe and America, not as a faith with universal validity for all the world. The difference between Kähler and Troeltsch is a point of major difference between churches. Troeltsch’s views are alive in those churches in which the mission of world evangelization has virtually collapsed, and replaced by interreligious dialogue and cross-fertilization of ideas, in the interest of promoting international peace and social justice. Kähler’s views are equally alive in Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Roman Catholic Churches that continue to demonstrate passion for world evangelization and affirm the exclusivity of Christ and his transforming gospel for the world’s salvation. Kähler’s theology continues to address issues at the forefront of contemporary biblical, historical, and dogmatic studies today. His voice is acutely relevant in relation to the never-ending quests of the historical Jesus, the significance of the doctrine of justification by faith in the ecumenical dialogues between Protestants and Catholics, and the reaffirmation of world mission and evangelization, especially in the younger and growing churches in the Global South.

Dietz Lange

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

Biography Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom, called Nathan since childhood, was born in the tiny village of Trönö, in the province of Hälsingland, Northern Sweden, on January 15, 1866. His father Jonas, son of a farmer, was the minister there. He was a follower of the Lutheran revival movement of Carl Olof Rosenius. Jonas was highly educated but theologically very conservative. He was extremely self-disciplined. Possessing a strong interest in foreign missions, he was an effective preacher and a dutiful servant of his congregation. He was equally devoted to his family, yet somewhat harsh and very strict with regard to educating his children. Nathan’s mother Sophia, nee Blume, was the daughter of a Danish doctor who had come to Sweden in order to help out with a cholera epidemic in the 1860s and had stayed on. She was interested in poetry and had a gentle, somewhat passive personality with a good sense of humor. She frequently had to compensate for the sometimes weird, Spartan ideas about childrearing that her husband held. However, an early onset of deafness on Sophia’s part and the great difference of character between the spouses led to their gradual estrangement, and she more and more retreated to her own rooms. Nathan was the second of seven siblings, two of whom had died in infancy. Sweden was a poor country at the time, with a high rate of emigration to the United States. Salaries for pastors were low. Most of those in rural areas had some agriculture on the side, which meant that their children had to help in the field from an early age. Nathan got his first schooling at home until the age of nine. His father, who had soon discovered his son’s intellectual gifts, even taught him Latin. However, his mother was by far the better teacher, as Nathan gratefully remembered all his life. He was himself a fortunate blend of his parents’ heritage: a relentless worker, able to concentrate on several things simultaneously, and had a quick grasp even of highly sophisticated and abstract subjects. Yet he was always down-to-earth in his thinking. His particular forte was empathy with people. He

328

Dietz Lange

could converse with the king as well as with a peasant on an equal footing and thus was predestined for pastoral care. Nathan received a solid classical education, with German and French as modern languages, and he developed a special interest in Scripture and church history early on. At the age of seventeen he enrolled at Uppsala University for the three-year liberal arts course leading to the degree of filosofie kandidat, roughly the equivalent of a B.A. His grades were particularly good in classical languages and Arabic. The young man then went on to study theology. In those years the faculty was not very attractive. The religious scene in the country was immersed in controversies between a rigidly orthodox state church, rapidly growing revival movements, and radical philosophical monism intruding from the European continent. But the professors of theology tended to insulate themselves from outside influences, in particular from historical criticism which carried the day in Germany. This was exactly what instigated the curiosity of the brighter students. One of these who had spent a term or two at a German university, brought home Wellhausen’s volume on the history of Israel. Söderblom borrowed and devoured it. Likewise, he became an avid reader of German New Testament exegesis, especially the Göttingen-based History of Religions School, Adolf Harnack’s history of dogma, Albrecht Ritschl’s works, Schleiermacher, Otto Pfleiderer, Wilhelm Herrmann, and others. He discussed all these things with a couple of friends: Nils Johan Göransson (later professor of dogmatics) and Samuel Fries, a gifted Old Testament scholar. They also read modern novels and poetry on an international scale. All this fascinated Söderblom but also plunged him into a deep personal crisis, since it stood in stark contrast to the religious orientation he had received back home. It took him two separate steps to solve the problem. The first step came in the fall of 1889. That was the discovery that God had not revealed himself in a book or a doctrine but in history, most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. This chimed in with the thought of the great nineteenth-century Swedish philosopher-historian Erik Gustaf Geijer, a prime representative of Romanticism whom Söderblom admired all his life. But that was only a solution on the intellectual level. What troubled him on the truly religious, existential level was that he seemed to lack the consciousness of sin which was so essential to revivalist piety. On the other hand, at times even his longing for certainty of faith appeared to him as selfish and therefore sinful. So he was caught in a quagmire that reminds one of Martin Luther’s repeated inner struggles, as well as of Søren Kierkegaard’s dialectical philosophy, both of which Söderblom knew well already. Help was provided a couple of months later by a little booklet by the Scottish revivalist preacher W.P. Mackay, “Grace and Truth,” which was widely read at the time and warmly recommended by the American

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

329

Dwight L. Moody. Mackay’s point was that a Christian had to turn his gaze away from self-analysis and toward Christ’s redemptive suffering on the cross. This new orientation was supplemented several years later by yet another deep religious experience that reminded him of the fact that the God of love continued to be the stern judge, and that his grace can only be understood and valued against this somber background. Through this development, Söderblom had gained inner freedom. He continued to adhere to the type of piety he had grown up in, but it was stripped of its inherent narrowness. The liberal conviction that Scripture and the history of dogma must be interpreted by modern historical methods, with no strings attached, was here to stay. But it received a counterweight in a growing appreciation of Martin Luther which actually became a major guideline of his later thought, at first strongly influenced by Albrecht Ritschl, but quite independent later on from that thinker’s rather one-sided interpretation of the reformer. The liberal streak of his thought caused a deep conflict with his father; which seems to have been resolved no sooner than at the deathbed of the old pastor, even though Söderblom was unswerving in his reverence for him. A further boost towards a wider perspective in religion and in life as a whole was Söderblom’s two-month stay in the United States, in particular his participation as a delegate to the Student Christian Movement’s conference in Northfield, Massachusetts in 1890. He was impressed both by the personality of its leader, Dwight L. Moody, and by the fact that members of the most different denominations, conservative as well as liberal, were able to discuss the Christian faith without the slightest attempt at proselytizing. This was the first formative ecumenical experience for him. In 1891, Söderblom met Anna Forsell, daughter of a sea captain and a student of history. They quickly fell in love with each other, and they got engaged the following year, the day after Söderblom had taken his exam as teologie kandidat (roughly corresponding to a master’s degree). Doctoral studies in the field of history of religions followed. This decision was motivated both by his early interest in foreign missions as well as in the question for the essence of religion itself and the place of Christianity within it. His doctoral thesis treated the eschatology of the ancient Persian religion of Mazdeism. In 1892 he was ordained. His professional life began with an appointment as chaplain at a psychiatric ward in a suburb of Uppsala. Only a year on, he was informed that there was to be an opening at the pastorate for the Scandinavian congregation in Paris in 1894. He applied and got the post. Anna and he got married soon after that. The new development also meant that he had to rush his doctoral thesis through the necessary steps. He did submit it in the nick of time – and was refused. So he had to rework and enlarge it in Paris.

330

Dietz Lange

The pastoral tasks in France included both the congregation in Paris which was quite a mixed lot: some diplomats, many domestic servants and manual workers, some artists; and care for Scandinavian sailors in Calais during the summertime. In either case, Söderblom encountered severe problems of poverty and exploitation. But with his active support of the needy and natural charm he easily won the trust of the people. Participation in a conference of the “Evangelic Social Congress” around Friedrich Naumann in Erfurt in 1896 helped him view the social problems in a larger perspective. These experiences found their literary echo in a book on “The Sermon on the Mount in Our Time,” as well as in an interesting little treatise on “Religion and Social Development.”1 In the latter, he turned against both Manchester capitalism and Marxist revolutionary ideas and pleaded for a reformist stance. Apart from these issues, there was one more thing that particularly aroused his interest and wrath. That was the infamous Dreyfus affair and the ugly face of anti-Semitism. In addition to all this, Söderblom had to take care of a rapidly growing family. The first five out of twelve children were born in Paris—one of whom died in infancy during these years. The parents also extended generous hospitality to artists and many others and took a lively interest in the great city’s cultural life. Last but not least, Söderblom underwent a hefty program of academic studies at the Sorbonne. He heard lectures by historians of religion like Antoine Meillet and Albert Réville, famous theologians like Auguste Sabatier, and philosophers like Émile Boutroux and Henri Bergson. Of these, Sabatier, co-founder of the school of symbolo-fideism, became his most important teacher. Sabatier’s basic tenet that all religious statements are symbolic in nature became part of the groundwork of Söderblom’s own theological concept. Finally, the friendship with the renowned Roman Catholic scholar Alfred Loisy should be mentioned. Loisy was later excommunicated as a modernist. Through discussions with him, with Paul Sabatier, biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, as well as with mainstream Catholics Söderblom gained a many-faceted picture of Roman Catholicism which was of great importance for his later ecumenical work. Small wonder that finishing his doctoral thesis in the midst of all these activities took its time, all the more since he extended it from a very specialized study on Persian religion into a comparative study in the eschatology of all those major religions that have developed one.2 He thus laid the ground for his scholarly life-work of a phenomenology of religion which covered the whole

1 Nathan Söderblom, Jesu bergspredikan och va˚ r tid (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1898); Religionen och den sociala utvecklingen (Stockholm: Bohlen and Co., 1898; German translation: Die Religion und die soziale Entwicklung [Freiburg i.B.: J.C.B. Mohr, 1898]). 2 Nathan Söderblom, La vie future d’après le Mazdéisme à la lumière des croyances parallèles des autres religions : Étude d’eschatologie comparée. AMG 9 (Paris: E. Leroux, 1901).

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

331

world of religions. He submitted his thesis in time and passed his doctoral exam with flying colors in 1901. Then two vastly different but equally incisive events happened in rapid succession. First, his father died—thankfully not before reconciliation between the two men had occurred. Second, Söderblom’s application for a professor’s chair in the history of religions at the theological faculty of Uppsala University was accepted. So now he had to start academic teaching. He was already remembered in Uppsala for two lectures he had given earlier as part of the application process: one on Schleiermacher’s famous Speeches on Religion; the other a comparative study of temptation: Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. Yet the reception he received was quite mixed. The students were enthusiastic, whereas the conservative faculty was pretty reserved because of the new professor’s liberal outlook. Söderblom’s inaugural lecture and his introductory speech to the students became a milestone in the history of the faculty. Theology was not a very attractive field of study in Sweden in those years. Söderblom’s vigorous plea for reconciliation between genuine Christian piety and modern theology, with the express inclusion of the history of religions as an integral part of it, did a lot to change that. The two fields were to be united by a common respect for reality, he said. General history of religion served to sharpen the eyes both for the kinship of Christianity with other religions and for its very essence. For useful studies in this field some religious experience of one’s own is an indispensable prerequisite, but that must not lead to partisan judgment on any religion. Söderblom conceded that such an unprejudiced approach did not preclude severe religious crises for the students, such as the one he himself had gone through. Nonetheless, he congratulated them on their choice of study and profession. As the field of history of religion had been rapidly expanding since the latter half of the nineteenth century, the new job meant an enormous workload. Furthermore, given that the chair Söderblom occupied had the nebulous name of teologiska prenotioner och encyklopedi (roughly: “encyclopedic preconceptions of theology”), his scholarly focus could also be understood as a free-for-all. Söderblom did consider it his primary task to plow through the whole of world religions both empirically and philosophically (with a particular emphasis on primitive religions and on Buddhism). But as he consistently viewed Christianity as part of the general history of religion, he felt free to include such subjects as Roman Catholic modernism, Luther, and Swedish church history.3 All of these were very much in need of fresh insights. The subject of Catholicism became particularly urgent when the Vatican excommunicated the rebellious

3 Bengt Sundkler, Nathan Söderblom: His Life and Work (Lund: Gleerup, 1968), 61ff.

332

Dietz Lange

modernists.4 His lecture on these became the basis of a book on “The Problem of Religion within Catholicism and Protestantism,” probably still the best treatment of modernism but unfortunately never translated.5 The likes of Loisy, John Henry Newman, and Friedrich von Hügel are viewed as more or less radical in many respects, such as their use of historical criticism to investigate Scripture, yet also as arch-Catholic, in that all of them continued to cling to the Roman Church as the ultimate authority. One more book should be mentioned in particular, just because it has rarely received the attention it deserves. That is The Study of Religion.6 It is an overview of that entire scholarly discipline, intended as an introduction for students, one that systematically exposes the relationships among its different parts. As such it stands in the tradition of Schleiermacher’s famous Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, yet is distinguished from it in three important aspects. Though Christianity is the first and most extensively treated religion, because it is the most important one in the Western world, it is not the exclusive subject but is incorporated into the world of religions in general. Second, a philosophical definition is not offered at the beginning, since such a definition is the goal of the project, following empirical descriptions, comparisons, and evaluations within the philosophy of religion. Third, church government (both as shaping its organization and as free theological reflection) is not the one purpose of studying religion, as with Schleiermacher, but rather a by-product. Nonetheless Söderblom thought that this by-product was even more effectively served by his approach than by the conventional exclusiveness of Christian theology. Söderblom’s standing in the faculty as well as in his church was not free of conflict. One example was his old friend Samuel Fries, whose application for the chair of New Testament exegesis fell through in 1902 because of his liberal views, whereas a decidedly less qualified candidate was preferred. Even more disturbing was the case of Torgny Segerstedt, one of his disciples, the following year. His doctoral thesis on the origin of polytheism, though excellent from a scholarly point of view, was rejected by the majority of the faculty on the ground that it lacked “Christian substance.”7 That created a veritable public scandal—to no avail. Söderblom then for a while even thought of resigning from his post. 4 Papal encyclical by Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis (The Vatican, September 8, 1907). Denzinger 3475–3500. 5 Nathan Söderblom, Religionsproblemet inom katolicism och protestantism (Stockholm: H. Gebers, 1910). 6 Nathan Söderblom, Studiet av religionen (Stockholm: Ljus, 1908; 2nd and 3rd ed. 1916). Reprinted in E. Ehnmark, ed., Om studiet av religionen (Lund: Gleerups, 1951), 49–152; German translation in D. Lange, ed., Nathan Söderblom, Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 165–252. Not available in English. 7 Eva Stohlander-Axelsson, Ett brännglas för tidens strålar, Ph.D. diss., Lund University (2001), esp. 210ff., and 222.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

333

One particular interest of Söderblom during his period as an Uppsala professor was to shake up the faculty’s provincialism by broadening relations with other countries. His most obvious achievement in this respect was setting up the Olaus Petri Foundation. This outfit was meant as an equivalent to the Giffordand Hibbert Lectures in Britain. A wealthy lady had donated a considerable sum of money for the purpose. The foundation, which is still in existence, has indeed lived up to its goal. Luminaries such as Franz Cumont, Ignaz Goldziher, Adolf Harnack, Friedrich Heiler, and Rudolf Otto have delivered lectures there. In addition, gifted students were to be given scholarships for a year of study abroad. Söderblom did not limit his activities to his duties as an academic teacher. He also served as a part-time pastor at Trefaldighetskyrkan (Trinity Church), and he took an active part in the ungkyrkorörelse (Young Church Movement). That was a movement for church reform with an emphasis on lay activity and striving to deliver the state church from its widespread staleness and superficiality, to counter atheistic tendencies in the intellectual world, to appeal to the younger generation, and to win back the class of laborers. It turned out to be the most significant such movement in the twentieth century. It harbored pretty strong nationalistic undercurrents during its first years, but since the beginning of World War I it moved towards Söderblom’s more international course. Far more wholehearted was Söderblom’s support of the movement’s social policies. The most obvious case in point was his very explicit vote for more social justice during the Great Strike of 1909. That secured him the attention of many a trade union representative later on when he had become archbishop. Domestic reform would not suffice, Söderblom felt. The Swedish church had to open its eyes to the outside world. There had already been talk of a rapprochement between the Anglican and the Swedish churches, on the ground that both had bishops and the apostolic succession. But these talks had been lingering for some time. That changed when Söderblom invited an Anglican delegation to Uppsala in 1909. They agreed with the Swedes on many things in principle, despite the fact that Söderblom had unequivocally stated that the apostolic succession was a good thing but not essential for the goal of church unity. However, it took until 1922 until the two churches formally agreed on intercommunion. All of these activities created an important platform for those larger ecumenical plans which had been launched by then. In order to introduce his own church to the Anglican community as a whole, Söderblom wrote two longer essays in an American journal.8 The first of these describes the origin of the Swedish state church, how it was able to retain its 8 Nathan Söderblom, “On the Character of the Church of Sweden” and “On the Soul of the Church of Sweden,” The Constructive Quarterly 3 (1915): 281–310 and 506–45. Swedish version: Svenska kyrkans kropp och själ (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1916).

334

Dietz Lange

independent administration when virtually all bishops converted to the Reformation, how all those traditions were carefully preserved that did not contradict the Lutheran interpretation of the faith, and how it defended its independence against state efforts to meddle with its internal affairs, most notably at the synod of 1593 against the machinations of the Swedish-Polish king Sigismund III to force it back into Roman Catholicism. The second essay contains the nucleus of Söderblom’s ecumenical theory: Since the time of a monolithic church organization has irrevocably gone by, the goal must be a new corpus evangelicorum. Such a body should not be uniform but preserve the different traditions of the various Protestant churches. They were to be united in both “contest” and “cooperation.”9 The year 1912 brought the next important change in Söderblom’s life. He had received a call to the new chair of history of religions at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He simultaneously kept his professorship in Uppsala since he considered the new assignment as only temporary. But inevitably he was more removed from his manifold activities back home. So this period turned out to be the pinnacle of Söderblom’s scholarly career. Leipzig was a booming industrial and commercial city of 600,000 inhabitants with an extremely attractive cultural life. It was the presentations of Bach’s music, for one, which particularly appealed to the Söderbloms. There were interesting members of the faculty like the church historian Albert Hauck and the systematic theologian Ludwig Ihmels. On the other hand, this was also the time of brash militaristic nationalism on the eve of the Great War. So for all his considerable success in teaching and his love for German culture, Söderblom never felt quite at home in the country. Of his teaching program, it is the lectures on Comparative Eschatology and on Holiness that stand out. Both subjects were carried through the whole history of religions. The lecture on eschatology was much more than a rehash of his doctoral thesis. It included, for instance, a thoroughgoing critique of modern philosophers of history such as Friedrich Nietzsche. However, more important, even in Söderblom’s own estimation, was the lecture on the idea of holiness. Here special attention was given to the “primitive” religions. These were thought by contemporary researchers to provide the key to the essence of religion itself. Söderblom did not share this view, which to a large extent was a romantic reaction of 19th century scholars to an increasingly mechanistic and positivistic view on life. But he did consider the notions of mana and taboo as important keys to that problem. This lecture became the basis of his most important book in the

9 Nathan Söderblom, “On the Soul of the Church of Sweden,” 544. For more on these terms, see below.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

335

field, Gudstrons uppkomst, which appeared in Swedish in 1914 and in German in 1916 (as Das Werden des Gottesglaubens).10 More on that below. May 20, 1914, produced a great surprise: Söderblom’s nomination as archbishop of Sweden. Only weeks later, the First World War broke out. This was more than just coincidence. It meant that from now on, Söderblom’s church activities were inseparably intertwined with his untiring efforts to help restore peace. He rightly interpreted the new turn of world events as the most devastating catastrophe of modern times, which marked the definitive end to the cultural optimism of the preceding period.11 Söderblom was installed in his new office on Nov. 8, 1914. His first official action was the publication of a voluminous pastoral letter.12 In it he aimed at three things in particular. One, he stretched out a hand of dialogue to the strong conservative forces in his church who were extremely skeptical of his nomination, without however compromising on his liberal convictions. Second, he praised social reforms by the state as an indirect effect of Christian ethics and tried to win over the estranged working class from their hostile attitude towards religion. Third, and most importantly, he spoke of the daunting tasks that the new world situation posed to his country and also his church. This part of the letter was reinforced by the sermon of Sept. 6 on “The Two Gods,” which belongs to the most lucid texts we have from him. Here he severely criticizes the nation “gods” or idols, holding sway even in the churches of the warring nations. Later, he chided the self-righteousness of the neutral nations as equally doomed.13 In his new function Söderblom proved to be equally gifted for both pastoral care and the administration of a large organization. Probably his most outstanding achievements were the thorough inspections of the congregations. He had an excellent rapport with people of all walks of life, and he could remember for years the details of many a person he had met only once. Equally important were his great strides at opening up the rather stuffy church life both toward a more natural relationship to the Free Churches and to the churches of the world. This leads us to Söderblom’s ecumenical activities. The outbreak of the war had demonstrated to him the necessity for the churches in the neutral countries of taking on the task of mediation. This concerned not only the peace appeals 10 Nathan Söderblom, Gudstrons uppkomst (Stockholm: Hugo Gerbers, 1914; German translation: Das Werden des Gottesglaubens [Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1916]). 11 Nathan Söderblom, Världskatastrofens inverkan (1924), in his Tal och skrifter, vol. 4 (Stockholm: Åhlén & Söner, 1933), 249–261. 12 Nathan Söderblom, Herdabref (Uppsala: F.C. Askerberg, 1914). 13 Nathan Söderblom, De två gudarne, in Nathan Söderblom, När stunderna växla och strida, vol. 2 (Stockholm: 1935; German translation: Ausgewählte Werke, 1:127–37); idem, Neutral egenrättfärdighet in: Kristendomen och vår tid 12 (1916): 116–122 (English translation: “Our Spiritual Peril as Neutrals,” The Constructive Quarterly 5 [1917]: 91–96).

336

Dietz Lange

which they repeatedly issued under Söderblom’s leadership. More immediately these churches strove to bring together to the conference table church leaders from the warring countries. These activities met with fierce resistance in the warring nations, not only during the war, but even afterwards. Many people saw Söderblom as part of the problem because he had criticized the war crimes of both sides with equal severity. Yet it is mostly due to his stubbornly following through with his plans that finally, in 1925, some seven years after the war ended, the first world conference of churches could take place in Stockholm. That conference was the first big international meeting of the “Life and Work” branch of the ecumenical movement. Söderblom considered the other branch, “Faith and Order,” as quite useful; in fact, he served as one of its vice-presidents for several years. But since he was convinced that the major differences between the churches in theology and church constitution would be here to stay, having a centuries-old development behind them, “Life and Work” always had priority for him. From this fact his adversaries within both Roman Catholicism and conservative Protestantism derived the critical jibe that the conference lacked a theological foundation. We shall see that this is utterly wrong. But indeed, its primary goal was to establish a basis for cooperation in coping with the tremendous misery, both material and spiritual, that the war had left behind. Wisely, Söderblom had reached an agreement beforehand that the hot question of who was guilty of the war was excluded from the conference’s agenda. Therefore the conversations occurred in a surprisingly amiable atmosphere. This in itself can be counted as a great success. Understandably, though, tensions were not entirely absent. The situation was confounded by the fact that not only was the confrontation of nationalities a source of irritation, but there was also a deep chasm between two main theological traditions within Protestantism. This concerned the very principles for approaching social and political problems. On one side there was conservative Lutheranism with its doctrine of the orders of creation. According to that, government was the executor of God’s will and had to be obeyed, almost regardless of what it decreed. The Kingdom of God would then have direct relevance only for the personal life of Christians, whereas worldly institutions had to follow their own rules dictated by practical reason. The Anglo-Saxon line of thought, which was guided both by Calvinism and the American Social Gospel, differed radically from that approach. Churchmen of this school believed that the Kingdom of God was a goal to be brought about by social action. Söderblom, a Lutheran but open to Calvinist ideas, took an intermediate position. For him, it went without saying that the Kingdom of God can only be brought about by God himself. However, Christianity proclaims that believers inspired by the love of God will extend that love, not only to their personal relationships, but also to society at large. Social and political institutions as such cannot be regarded as the

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

337

work of God but are steeped in sinfulness and therefore in constant need of being improved. The conference neither yielded a solution to the theological problems, nor did it produce much in the way of tangible results concerning the urgent practical needs. Yet it had laid the foundation for a more peaceful cooperation in the future. However, hopes for progress in this area were subdued considerably during the coming years. Nationalism increasingly grew in strength once again and it finally led to the rise of Fascism and National Socialism which for many years brought the ecumenical accomplishments to nil. The ecumenical movement itself also lacked the necessary drive, particularly since Söderblom, its energetic leader, increasingly suffered poor health and was less and less able to shoulder his enormous workload. The follow-up Continuation Committee did not work efficiently. And the next big conference in Lausanne in 1927, in which Söderblom took part, this time of the Faith and Order branch, was a flop. It foundered because the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church, which was strongly represented there, had insisted on episcopacy as the indispensable presupposition for any kind of church unity. In addition, the Vatican, which had already refused to take part in the Stockholm Conference, unequivocally doomed the ecumenical movement as heretical in the encyclical “Mortalium animos” in 1928 and prohibited Catholics in no uncertain terms from participating in any of its activities.14 As there was no significant success to be expected in the field of ecumenism for the foreseeable future, Söderblom to a certain extent was able again to turn to his scholarly interests. Even before Stockholm, he had managed to produce a remarkable book on Luther, based on life-long study of the Reformer’s writings. It contains lectures delivered in Swedish churches mostly on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the Reformation in 1917. Already its title arouses curiosity: Humor and Melancholy and Other Studies in Luther.15 It is not, as one might surmise from that, a psychological interpretation in the strict sense. However, as Söderblom was convinced that religion is basically a personal relationship to the holy, with all institutional aspects, including doctrine, being only secondary, his aim was to locate the new understanding of the Christian faith firmly in Luther’s personal life. So he made heavy use of the sermons, the table talks and the letters. Humor represents Luther’s distance from himself and melancholy his frequent tribulations. His central concern, Söderblom claimed, is with the problem of certainty of faith without the mediation of the church’s authority. 14 Papal encyclical, Mortalium animos (The Vatican, 1928) in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 20 (1928): 5–16. 15 Nathan Söderblom, Humor och melankoli och andra Lutherstudier (Stockholm: Sveriges kristliga studentrörelses, 1919). German translation in Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 4 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). Not available in English.

338

Dietz Lange

During his tenure as archbishop Söderblom only infrequently reverted to his proper field of history of religion. Here he only was able to publish a couple of articles, maybe because he felt that he had not been able to participate in the ongoing debates for too long. He did find the time though to summarize his life work in the Gifford Lectures on “The Living God,” which he delivered toward the very end of his life in 1931. However, he could only conceive and deliver the former half of it before he died; of the second half only an outline and a few notes are extant in his records.16 But the lull in the ecumenical development seems to have suggested to Söderblom that he should devote some time to the very core of theology. This he did in writing a book on the passion of Christ, Kristi pinas historia (“History of Christ’s Suffering”). It is an interpretation of the passion story for laity.17 One can also call it a literary work of art. On the face of it, the book offers “only” an interpretation of the Biblical narrative on the basis of solid historical exegesis. But it is conceived as a drama, a bit like a passion play, with “acts” and “scenes.” There is a compilation of texts from the Gospels at the head of each part which is assigned the function of the choir in a Greek tragedy: announcing what is going to happen next. The text is interspersed with references to different views of the passion in the history of devotional life and in literature and art, as well as with comparisons to other religions, thus opening a world-wide perspective. In addition the author constantly refers to the church’s life today. There is a long passage on our participation in the Lord’s Supper. So the “congregation” finds itself on the “stage” too, as it were. It is also represented by the many stanzas from hymns and poems at the end of many passages. All of this serves to express the basic tenet of the book: the purpose of Christ’s vicarious suffering is our salvation and that of all humankind. It sets an end to all ritual sacrifice as it actually is God’s own love which sacrifices itself on the Cross. A fitting reward for an extraordinary career was the conferment of the Nobel Peace Prize upon him in 1930. Söderblom probably was the only laureate in history who had known Alfred Nobel personally. He had talked over the latter’s idea of the foundation with him in Paris and buried him in San Remo in 1896. He could remind his listeners in his official speech that even Nobel had thought of an international court of arbitration and of sanctions against war.18

16 Nathan Söderblom, Den levande Guden: grundformer av personlig religion (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag, 1932); English: The Living God (London: Oxford University Press, 1933). 17 Nathan Söderblom, Kristi pinas historia. Vår Herres Jesu Kristi lidande. En passionsbok för stilla veckan och andra veckor (Stockholm, 1928; German translation in N.S., Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 18 Nathan Söderblom, Kyrkans fredsplikt, dess vägar och mål (Stockholm 1931), 3.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

339

The final years of Söderblom’s life were increasingly marked by illnesses. He had already had bleeding stomach ulcers in the period of 1906—1908, and he had a heart attack in 1922, with frequent bouts of angina pectoris in the following years. In July 1931, he suffered an onslaught of intestinal obstruction. Because of the acute danger to his life, the doctors had to decide for immediate surgery, in spite of the risk posed by the poor condition of the patient’s heart. The operation was successful, but two massive heart attacks followed. Söderblom died on July 12, 1931, when he was only sixty-five years old. But he left a truly remarkable literary heritage.

Söderblom’s Works Revelation Söderblom’s first important publication after his installment as professor was a booklet on the nature of revelation.19 It was occasioned by two lectures of the German orientalist Friedrich Delitzsch on Babylon and the Bible, who asserted the moral and religious superiority of Babylonian culture over ancient Israel. He concluded that the Old Testament could not lay claim to be based on divine revelation because of its many moral shortcomings.20 This publication had caused quite a stir in Germany and beyond. Söderblom replied briefly on two points. First, there is no exact correspondence between the development of culture and of religion, since a supernatural origin can be claimed only for the latter. Second, revelation must not be identified with the verbal inspiration of the Bible or information about a doctrine, as Delitzsch had done. Rather, it is revelation of the divine itself which is revealed to the believer. From this starting point Söderblom went on to unfold a theory of revelation with the aim of determining Christianity’s locus in the world of religions. For him the most plausible explanation of the existence of religions is that they are not based on human invention but on some kind of divine initiative. However, as revelation enters a cultural context, it takes on different shapes. Söderblom distinguished between general and special revelation. General revelation is not what orthodoxy took the term to mean, nor has it anything to do with the abstract “natural religion” of the Enlightenment. Rather, it takes on a peculiar in19 Nathan Söderblom, Uppenbarelsereligion (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag, 1903; 2d. ed., 1930; English translation: The Nature of Revelation [New York: Oxford University Press, 1933]). 20 Friedrich Delitzsch, Babel und Bibel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1903; 2d ed., 1904). Friedrich Delitzsch (1850–1922) was the son of the Old Testament scholar Franz Delitzsch (1813–90).

340

Dietz Lange

dividuality in every single historical religious collective. Nonetheless, general revelation is represented by a specific type of religion that is characterized by the contrast between nature and spirit. Söderblom called these the religions of culture and of nature. Such religions belong to clans, tribes, and nations. They are bound up with tangible objects, such as holy locations, rites and customs, organizations and their representatives, holy books and so on. One can therefore also speak of institutional religions. But there is a tendency in this type of religion to radicalize the contrast of nature and spirit into the “dualism” of finite and infinite. It then becomes a “mysticism of infinity” which is marked by an essentially negative evaluation of the world. Therefore its goal is to redeem the individual from suffering by dissolving it in infinity. The most obvious example is the nirvana of Buddhism. The goal here is to be achieved by asceticism and exercises of meditation. Such religions are thus based on a mysticism of exercise. Thus far this seems to be a pretty clear description. However, the terminology is not without certain flaws. So the classification of Buddhism, of all religions, as a religion of culture, even though its objective is to leave the whole world behind it including culture, seems unfortunate.21 This is probably why Söderblom later abandoned that terminology. On the other hand, we have those religions which are based on special revelation. That term is not to be identified with the Biblical religions, nor is it a term of dogmatics, but one of the phenomenology of religions. It denotes a kind of revelation that occurs through a particular person, the founder of a religion, at a particular time and place in history, and entails something essentially new. Söderblom called these religions prophetic or personal religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Their godhead is not a nondescript infinity but a “living God” who acts in history and turns directly to the heart of the human person. The guiding principle of such religions is the “dualism” of good and evil. Therefore they put a strong emphasis on ethics and the conscience of the believer. This implies a positive attitude to the world as a good creation which is entrusted to humankind for cultivating. The contrast between the two kinds of religion is stark but not absolute. So the institutional religions also are to some extent personal in that they require wholehearted support. On the other hand, even personal religions cannot do without an institutional framework like tradition, symbolic actions, and the like. It is the priorities that count. A case in point is the relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism. For the former, adherence to the church as an institution is the prerequisite for participation in salvation, whereas for Protestantism it is personal faith which is primary. This faith does create a church 21 This has been pointed out by the Dutch author J.M. van Veen, Nathan Söderblom: Leven en denken van een godsdiensthistoricus (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1940), 169. 172.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

341

institution, too, which is indispensable for its social life in this world, but for the Protestant it is secondary to the community of believers and, like all human products, of only preliminary duration. Similarly, there are moments of meditation and of “exercise” even in prophetic religions, but they are to be strictly subordinated to the immediacy of personal certainty. One might add that the relative right thus accorded even to a mysticism of infinity implies the insight that a rigidly exclusive preference of prophetic religion would lure us into the trap of anthropomorphism. This is probably what Söderblom had in mind when he indicated a certain relativity to his distinction. Yet to my knowledge he did not explicitly state that anywhere. So predominant was his orientation by the philosophy of personality of his great mentor Erik Gustaf Geijer that he contented himself with just that hint. A further criterion for the distinction between types of religions is their view of suffering. It is at this point that Buddhism and Christianity come to represent the exemplary opposites within the history of religions. While the Buddhist seeks to escape suffering, aiming at a state of infinite harmony, the Christian expressly integrates it in the road to salvation. Söderblom illustrates that with Luther’s tribulations, thereby implicitly criticizing even some tendencies in contemporary Protestant liberal theology.

Holiness Söderblom’s most important feat in the field of history of religion is his discovery of the idea of holiness as basic to all religions, years before Rudolf Otto’s famous book on The Idea of the Holy (1917). If religion is based on revelation, not on human cunning, then its origin is supernatural. This origin ought to be the same for all religions. It then cannot be equated with the notion of God, since neither Buddhism nor primitive religions worship a God. Söderblom’s name for this supernatural origin is holiness. The notion of holiness thus is even more basic than the idea of God. It is that which inspires utter fear and trembling as well as unlimited trust and certainty. Söderblom stated this double character of all religion early on, almost in passing, in a book review, at that time still without using the very term of holiness: The sentiments of trust and fear, accompanied by a cult and exerting a powerful influence on all of life, the total of feelings, actions, and concepts, which we call religion …22 22 Nathan Söderblom, review of E. Siecke, Die Urreligion der Germanen in Revue de l’histoire des religions 42 (1900): 275–278. French in the original. Here 277.

342

Dietz Lange

Söderblom had first hit upon the notion of holiness in the Old Testament, of course. In his first lecture on the subject in Uppsala 1912, he still devoted more than half of his time to that source.23 Other elements contributing to his understanding of holiness were his deep religious experiences that solved the crisis he had been suffering in his student days, as well as his intensive study of Martin Luther. These facts notwithstanding, it is not appropriate to say that Söderblom had tried to force a notion from the Judeo-Christian tradition on the whole world of religion. It was, as we have already mentioned, particularly his thorough study of the primitive religions that provided him with plenty of other pertinent samples. This subject was attractive for him not just because it was so predominant in contemporary research, but also because it was closely related to Christian missions. It was missionaries to whom the bulk of the knowledge of those religions was still owed. For a scholar in comparative religions whose goal it was to discover the very essence of religion as such, that entailed an enticement to inquire for similarities despite the vast cultural differences. However, Söderblom went far beyond that and searched the whole world of religions in order to be sure of the result. For that purpose, Söderblom also had to examine critically the many competing theories of his day which claimed to define the essence of all religions by one single scheme: animism, animatism, totemism, and others. I cannot here reproduce this highly complex debate.24 Suffice it to say that Söderblom found a grain of truth in all of them but deemed them deficient altogether in their singlecause simplicity: No key opens all doors, as he often said. For his own solution he claimed two basic presuppositions. One is revelation. This is directed not only against David Hume’s theory of religion and, even more so, against Ludwig Feuerbach’s scathing criticism, but more specifically against a very successful author of his own time, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim. This scholar derived religion from the desire of primitive society to establish a basis for minimum moral authority. In effect, religion was for him the selfdeification of human society.25 In the excessive nationalism of his day, Söderblom may have seen the practical consequences of Durkheim’s view. 23 Carl-Martin Edsman, Människan och det heliga (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1995), 236. 24 For a fuller presentation, see my biography, Nathan Söderblom und seine Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 227–243, or the monographic treatments by Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion (LaSalle: Open Court, 1975), and Hans G. Kippenberg, Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1997). 25 Émile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 5th ed. (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 24, 50–68. This work was originally published in 1912 in Paris. English translation: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life : A Study in Religious Sociology (London : Allen & Unwin, 1912).

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

343

It has been concluded from Söderblom’s criticism of Durkheim that he was not interested in the social aspect of religion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Religious rites and customs played a significant role in his teaching, let alone his lively interest in the institutional shape of the Christian church.26 He did insist, however, that though religion certainly does have important social functions, it cannot be defined by these but exceeds all functions it might perchance be serving. The second presupposition is that religion, in spite of its close relation to ethics, by all means is more than just the foundation of morals or a sort of metaethics. Rather, Söderblom reminds us of Schleiermacher’s injunction that religion is a realm all of itself, neither separated from morals or rationality, nor identical to either of them. In this respect, he has gone through a process of development. At the onset of his earliest article on holiness, he at first stressed the genuinely religious character of the notion. But as he went on, he so much emphasized religion’s function of reinforcing the moral imperative, that in the end it appears to be some kind of meta-ethics after all.27 This was very much in line with contemporary Neo-Kantian philosophy of religion.28 But in the following years he gradually elaborated more clearly the specifically religious character of holiness and establishes it as the one concept that defines all religion. In a book written in 1910 one characteristic sentence can be found which he frequently repeated: “A pious person is the one who seriously considers something as holy.”29 Here he differentiates between a more ethically-oriented (Kant) and a more esthetically-oriented approach (Goethe); above these, he places Luther who is said to represent a truly existential religious attitude. Definite clarity on this point was, however, not reached before the Leipzig years. This was when Söderblom not only wrote his fundamental article on Holiness for the renowned Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, but also presented his lecture on holiness in a completely new version.30 He now made more extensive use than before of the terms taboo and mana. Human religion is nothing but unconditional submission to the mysterious power of holiness. This power consists at the same time of the threat of annihilation and the source of life.

26 See the list of lectures compiled by Bengt Sundkler, Nathan Söderblom, 62. 27 See Nathan Söderblom, “Helig, Helighet,” in Nordisk familjebok, konversations lexikon (Stockholm: Aktiebolaget Familjebokens, 1909), 11: 310–14. 28 See, for example, Wilhelm Windelband, Das Heilige: Skizze zur Religionsphilosophie (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1911). 29 Nathan Söderblom, Religionsproblemet (1910), 388. See also Nathan Söderblom, Der evangelische Begriff eines Heiligen (Greifswald: L. Bamberg, 1925). 30 Nathan Söderblom, “Holiness,” Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1913), 6:731–41; lecture manuscript, “Heiligkeit“ – Lecture manusript, einschließlich Tabu, unrein, rein, etc. (Leipzig, summer term 1913) – unpublished; NSS C, MS 1913, box 42, Univ. Library Uppsala.

344

Dietz Lange

The basic feeling it incites in humans is awe.31 Ultimately there is a tendency in the history of religions to overcome the ubiquitous distinction between “holy” and “profane” in the direction of sanctification of the whole world. Söderblom illustrated all this with an overwhelming wealth of examples. He thereby showed that his concept had definitely grown beyond being just a synthesis of Old Testament and primitive religions. There still is a certain one-sidedness in this lecture which is already indicated in its heading: it works primarily with the notion of taboo (9 out of 20 paragraphs), much less with mana, so that holiness appears to be inspiring primarily fear. “Mercy” is declared to be only secondary in this context. This is corrected in the book Gudtrons uppkomst, which contains the definitive version of Söderblom’s theory of holiness. Now it is the positive power of mana which takes the lead.32 The aspect of fear by no means disappears. On the contrary, it continues to serve as a strong defense against any bland religion of culture or naive complacency. But this latest turn did enable Söderblom to work out the creative capacity of holiness which in the final analysis supersedes its destructive capacity. It may be instructive to add a short comparison with Rudolf Otto’s book “The Idea of the Holy.”33 This book obviously came after Söderblom’s main contributions to the subject; Otto had already reviewed Gudstrons uppkomst in its Swedish version, and in some ways he built upon the ideas elaborated there. However, he had been inquiring on the same track even earlier. Apart from the question of priority there is also a difference in content. What Otto called the Holy, is a synthesis of the irrational Numinous (divine) with rationality (this term taken in a very wide sense). It is this synthesis which aroused Otto’s interest (compare the book’s subtitle), a synthesis which develops along with culture in the course of history until it reaches its peak in Christianity. So the decisive motivation obviously comes from Christian theology, not so much from comparative religion. For Söderblom on the other hand, the holy is that which Otto called the “Numinous.” Therefore, in his view the holy can be subject neither to any kind of synthesis or development, because it is the supernatural itself. It is the human being’s confrontation with this destructive and creative transcendent power which attracted Söderblom’s attention. He was thereby better able than Otto to avoid any domestication of the idea of the holy. This is why Gustaf Aulén

31 Nathan Söderblom, “Holiness,” ERE (1913), 6:731. 32 See the German version, Nathan Söderblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens (1916), 33–113. 33 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine in Relation to the Rational (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950). The German original was published in 1917.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

345

was probably right in considering Söderblom’s concept superior to that of his German colleague.34

Mediation The holy must be mediated in some way if it is to be understood by humans. Having excluded synthesis as a means to that end, Söderblom suggested a dialectical process of contest and cooperation between the various religions which keeps occurring throughout all of history. When and how this process reaches its goal must be left to God, even though Christians are personally convinced that their religion will be vindicated in the end. This basic openness recommends Söderblom’s concept as conforming to the reality of a pluralistic world of religions. This idea of “contest” and “cooperation” was originally taken not from the science of religions but from social science. Söderblom borrowed the former term from the British social philosopher Benjamin Kidd.35 It had been Kidd’s contention that in the general struggle for survival the race with the best religiously based moral system would survive, and that was to his mind the Anglo-Saxons’. Söderblom did not buy the social Darwinist and racist implications of this treatise, and he added the idea of cooperation for good measure. He did, however, use the term of “contest” as one of the key notions of his social theory. Söderblom first applied that idea to the social problems of his day, as indicated above. Clearly in accord with the German Naumann group, he directed it against both exploitative capitalism and the ideology of revolutionary class struggle. Instead he pleaded for peaceful, non-violent negotiations between labor and management (later to be called cooperation), for union power and gradual elimination of paternalism, better housing and working conditions. This does not preclude strikes which are sometimes unavoidable. But the negotiating table should be preferred if possible.36 In the following years he extended the use of the term to cover all kinds of social relationships: to religions (especially in the context of missions), to

34 Gustaf Aulén, “Det teologiska nutidsläget,” Svensk teologisk kvartalskrift 5 (1929): 119–146 (here 127). 35 B. Kidd, Social Evolution (London: Macmillan and Co., 1894). Söderblom wrote a long review of it in French (32 pages!) which, however, was never published, probably because of its length. The draft survives in his records, NSS MS 1897. 36 Nathan Söderblom, Religionen och den sociala utvecklingen (1898), 126–129; German version: 74–76.

346

Dietz Lange

Christian denominations, to nations. In all those cases, he combined it with “cooperation” or one of its synonyms.37 By this extension Söderblom made several important implications which must be pointed out explicitly. For one thing, he made religion a subject not only of the science of religion but also of his social philosophy. That means that religion in spite of its indispensable base in personal experience also is a social phenomenon as a collective individuality. It is in this latter respect that it is involved in contest and cooperation. Second, the connotations of contest or competition are not, as Söderblom’s biographer Sundkler would have it, limited to something as harmless as a sporting contest.38 Rather, they include even violent conflicts such as war. The point here is that such conflicts must be defused as quickly and effectively as possible, so that competition can really be coupled with cooperation. A few more remarks are necessary on contest and cooperation in the ecumenical context. It is here that these notions have come to play their most important role. Not surprisingly, it is also in this area that the most grievous misunderstandings of Söderblom’s theory have occurred, with consequences that in part influence even current debates on church unity. It is a well-known fact that Söderblom often lamented the separations and disunity of the Christian church and worked hard for decades to overcome them. However, the question is what sort of unity it is that he wanted to be installed. It may be taken for granted that in criticizing disunity, it was very much the polemics and even downright hatred so common between Roman Catholics and Protestants at the time that provoked Söderblom’s criticism, as well as the sometimes strained relations between the Lutheran state church and the “free churches” (Baptists, Pentecostals, etc.) in his own country. It does not follow from this, however, that his goal was one single uniform super-church the world over. On the contrary, that is the Roman Catholic ideal of church unity. For Söderblom, his basic notions of contest and cooperation clearly show that in his vision of unity the different denominations would continue to exist. It is not variety as such which constituted the problem; separations of different church bodies sometimes even turn out to be inevitable, as in the case of the Reformation, even though Luther had never actually wanted to found a new church institution. Besides, as a historian of religion Söderblom knew very well that no

37 For religions: Nathan Söderblom, Religionsproblemet (1910), 453; Missionens motiv och kulturvärde, in: Nathan Söderblom, Ur religionens historia (Stockholm: 1915), 170–199 (here 197); for Christian denominations: On the Soul of the Church of Sweden (1915), 544ff.; for nations: De två gudarne, in Nathan Söderblom, När stunderna växla och strida, vol. 2 (Stockholm: 1935), 103–112 (here 106, 109). 38 Sundkler, Nathan Söderblom, 69.

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

347

large world religion has ever been able to maintain a monolithic organization in the long run. So what he aimed at was a “unity in variety.”39 Söderblom’s earliest model of such a unity may have been the Northfield conference that he had attended as a young student. Another link is an essay by the German church historian Adolf Harnack. It uses the picture of a garden where there is a residence for each of the Christian denominations. These have their different accommodations but share common responsibility for the garden.40 Similarly, Söderblom stated that the unity of the churches consisted in their common faith in Christ, whereas their joint responsibility meant confronting the misery in the world. In this way, Protestantism could justly claim its own kind of universality or catholicity, with equal legitimacy as the Greek Orthodox and the Roman churches. This is what Söderblom called “evangelic catholicity.”41 Those three large representatives of the Christian tradition must be able to coexist peacefully.42 The only adequate organizational structure for church unity then is some sort of federation, something like the Federal Council of Churches in the United States. Indeed Söderblom as early as in 1919 launched the idea of a World Council of Churches.43 Uniformity of doctrine and organization, on the other hand, could only be achieved by either force or hypocrisy. Neither of these is an option to which Protestants could or should agree. However, Söderblom strongly emphasized that the combination of contest and cooperation must be imbued with love.44 The great test of these ideas was the Conference of Life and Work in Stockholm in 1925. Söderblom had conceived of it all along as the churches becoming the vanguard of reconciliation between the nations. He even thought of the Christian faith as the “soul” of the League of Nations. This organization had to establish an international order of law. Such an order was, to Söderblom’s mind, a con39 Nathan Söderblom, Christian Fellowship or the United Life and Work of Christendom (New York: Revel, 1923), 21. 40 Adolf Harnack, “Protestantismus und Katholizismus in Deutschland,” in: Adolf von Harnack, Reden und Aufsätze, N.F. 1 (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1911), 225–250. 41 Nathan Söderblom, “Evangelische Katholizität,” in Festschrift A. Deissmann (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1927), 327–334. 42 This has nothing to do with the so-called branch theory. That is an idea designed by the Anglican William Palmer in 1833, the point of which was that the “branches” were the old episcopal churches. The criterion for unity thus was an institutional one, which Söderblom always roundly rejected. Cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (1997), 232. 43 The first instance I know of is a letter to Johannes Kolmodin on March 8, 1919 (N.S. ecumenical collection, Univ. Library Uppsala); the first presentation in print was in Evangelisk katolicitet in: E. Lehman et al., Enig kristendom, Kyrkans enhet 7 (1919): 65–126; he repeated it in “The Church and International Goodwill,” in: The Contemporary Review 116 (1919): 309– 315. 44 Nathan Söderblom, Christian Fellowship, 155–180.

348

Dietz Lange

tinuation of God’s creation. In order to be that, it needed a religious foundation. It appears that church unity (of the kind just described) was to him no less than a continuation of God’s revelation in Christ. This parallelism between the League and ecumenism does not entail, however, that it is the church which should be the League’s soul, as a Swedish churchman has suggested.45 Söderblom had thought of a religious, not an ecclesiastical basis for international law. Whether or not there was any chance of the Christian faith to be accepted as such by the League is, of course, open to debate, to say the least. For the League consisted not only of (nominally) Christian nations and its dependencies but also of non-Christian ones such as Persia, China, and Japan. But before discarding this as just a relic of the age-old dream of a “Christian world,” one should remember the fact that Söderblom had, in an interesting little booklet of 1919, uttered the hope that religion might undergo a thorough renewal.46 The world catastrophe of the war had caused immense suffering and thereby destroyed the previous century’s illusion of infinite progress towards a better world. So it was the religion of the Cross that Söderblom hoped could serve as a more adequate basis even for modern life than old-time liberalism.

Söderblom’s Legacy Söderblom was, like everyone else, a child of his time. But he also was one of those geniuses who are able to cast a glimpse beyond the confines of their immediate present. Therefore it does not appear futile to raise the question what impact this man’s work may have for our own time. First, Söderblom understood his phenomenology of religion as a comparative study of religions with the aim of getting a clear picture not only of what distinguishes them but also of what they have in common, in order to get an idea of what religion as such really is. This search appears to have largely been abandoned in the field of history of religion. This is due to the pervasive suspicion that it is guided by an illegitimate interest of Christian theology. Therefore many scholars in the field have reverted to the nineteenth-century ideal of “pure” or “objective” science. However, the ideal of absolute objectivity has been proved to be an epistemological mirage by nineteenth-century philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey and by twentieth-century sociology of knowledge. The subconscious romanticism of the frantic search for the essence of religion in the primitive religions is a vivid illustration of the point. 45 Sven-Erik Brodd, “The Church as the Soul of European Civilization. Archbishop N. Söderblom on Church and Society,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 4 (1991): 128–138. This is high-church wishful thinking. 46 Nathan Söderblom, Gå vi mot religionens förnyelse? (Stockholm: Sveriges Kristliga Studentrörelses, 1919; German translation: Ausgewählte Werke 2:139–63).

Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931)

349

Neither is the insistence of some researchers that religion has to be understood exclusively as a stratagem of humans for reaching mundane ends a proof of objectivity. Söderblom seems to me to be right in comparing that sort of “neutrality” to an unmusical person who sets out to judge a piece of music. Instead he claims that any historian of religion must have some kind of religious experience. Besides, modern empiricism tends to make religion nothing but a part of psychology, sociology, or ethnology. What kind of part? What is religion as such? For all the wealth of empirical data—which has increased tremendously since Söderblom’s day, making some of his findings obsolete—one often looks in vain for a clear-cut answer to such simple questions. Söderblom’s own description of religion as being gripped by the holy and proclaiming it in word and deed is, to my mind, as true today as when it was first stated. In addition, it is a timely antidote against the blandness and superficiality of much that calls itself religion in the Western world today. In Söderblom’s time, European societies were not really pluralistic in religious terms. Yet his advice, secondly, to treat religious pluralism by means of a combination of contest and cooperation seems astonishingly appropriate, even today. It is threatened, however, from two quarters. One is Fundamentalism, which at Söderblom’s time was pretty much limited to the United States (Princeton theology) and not yet prone to use pressure or even force in order to further its agenda. But even here, Söderblom’s idea still defines the desirable method of inter-religious dialogue. To be sure, there are instances in which worldly authorities will have to intervene with some sort of coercion in order to preserve religious freedom. The other threat comes from secularism, which has spread so much more widely in the Western world since Söderblom’s time. Here the problem is that of engaging people in a dialogue and cooperation that they do not seem to have any interest in. This may turn out to be just as difficult as inducing fundamentalists to a measure of tolerance. However, even this phenomenon does not speak against Söderblom’s overall view. What has been said about the relationship between religions, analogously applies to that between the Christian denominations. It is much to be regretted that Söderblom’s ingenious idea of evangelic catholicity, thirdly, has been either forgotten or distorted to mean a synthesis of Protestant “freedom of Christian people” with Roman Catholic belief in church authority. This is what Friedrich Heiler once construed Söderblom’s idea to mean.47 Today all too many Protestants of different persuasions seem to adhere to that kind of oxymoron. It seems to me particularly obvious in the talks conducted between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Church. It does not take prophetic inspiration to predict that such talks will not be getting anywhere as long as this problem is not 47 Friedrich Heiler, Evangelische Katholizität (Munich: Reinhardt, 1926), 152, 163, 172–175.

350

Dietz Lange

tackled. Meanwhile it is worth remembering that it is the World Council of Churches which thus far has followed Söderblom’s concept pretty closely. It has fared far better in this respect. As for the “Christian soul” Söderblom demanded for the League of Nations, finally it seems obvious that this idea is definitely dated. Instead, the pairing of contest and cooperation should be applied to the different world views guiding the members of the United Nations. Yet recourse to some basic ideas common to all major religions like the obligation to procure peace certainly is the remaining grain of truth of Söderblom’s proposal. In sum, there is still a lot to be learned from that great Swedish scholar and churchman, and I hope that with improving accessibility of the sources he will be read more widely in the future.48

48 I have in recent years made some strides to mend the sorry state of affairs somewhat, although only partly in English. See N. Söderblom, Brev—Lettres—Briefe–Letters (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), a collection from his correspondence both in the original languages and an English translation; the biography of 2011 (see not 24 above), which is based on a wide array of original sources, including unpublished ones, and finally the 4-volume seriess of selected sources in a German translation, Ausgewählte Werke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011–2015).

List of Contributors

Christoph Barnbrock Professor of Practical Theology Lutherische Theologische Hochschule Oberursel Oberursel, Germany Matthew L. Becker Associate Professor of Theology Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana Carl E. Braaten Emeritus Professor of Theology Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago Chicago, Illinois Christoffer Grundmann John R. Eckrich University Professor in Religion and the Healing Arts Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana Roy A. Harrisville Emeritus Professor of New Testament Luther Seminary Saint Paul, Minnesota Christine Helmer Professor of Religious Studies and German Arthur E. Andersen Teaching and Research Professor Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois

352

List of Contributors

Anders Holm Associate Professor of Theology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark Carl Hughes Assistant Professor of Theology Texas Lutheran University Seguin, Texas Darrell Jodock Emeritus Professor of Religion Gustavus Adolphus College Saint Peter, Minnesota Dietz Lange Emeritus Professor of Theology University of Göttingen Göttingen, Germany Mark Mattes Professor of Theology and Philosophy Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Lutz Mohaupt Emeritus Senior Pastor St. Jacobi Evangelical-Lutheran Church Member and Former President of the Hamburg Parliament Hamburg, Germany Mark Oldenburg Dean of the Chapel and Steck-Miller Professor of the Art of Worship Gettysburg Seminary Gettysburg, Pennsylvania David Ratke Chair of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Religious Studies Lenoir-Rhyne University Hickory, North Carolina

List of Contributors

Hans Schwarz Emeritus Professor of Theology Faculty of Evangelical Theology University of Regensburg Regensburg, Germany Mark Seifrid Professor of Exegetical Theology Concordia Seminary St. Louis, Missouri

353

Index of Persons

Altenstein, Karl v., 44 Althaus, Paul, 16, 112–13 Andreae, Jakob, 10 Anselm of Canterbury, 115, 287 Aquinas, Thomas, 202, 301 Aristotle, 10, 14, 26, 55, 280, 283 Aschoff, Peter, 119n Asendorf, Ulrich, 42n, 44, 64 Athanasius, 115 Augustine of Hippo, 115 Aulén, Gustaf, 204n, 344–45 Bach, Johann S., 13, 334 Baier, Johann W., 11 Barth, Karl, 7, 8n, 205, 211 – and Beck, 126–27, 132 – and Herrmann, 293 – and Hofmann, 192n, 206n – and Kähler, 313–14 – and Kierkegaard, 19, 252 – and Ritschl, 276–77 Baur, Ferdinand C., 17–18, 87–98, 118, 122– 23, 141, 278–83, 310 Bayer, Oswald, 24n, 97n Beck, Johann T., 17–18, 121–41, 310 Bengel, Johann A., 12, 141 Berkeley, George, 296, 300–301, 307 Beutel, Albrecht, 99n, 102n, 118–19 Beyschlag, Karlmann, 111, 112n, 113, 118, 190n Beyschlag, Willibald, 312, 314 Blumhardt, Christian G., 122 Boehme, Jacob, 45–46, 48–49, 55, 64–65, 310n

Bomhard, August, 105 Bomhard, Christian v., 99, 105 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 252 Braaten, Carl, 62n Brunner, Emil, 23, 25, 313 Bultmann, Rudolf, 19, 96, 127, 205, 206n, 293, 313, 324 Burger, Georg, 180–81 Calov, Abraham, 11 Calvin, John, 54, 60n, 136, 230, 275, 284, 336 Chemnitz, Martin, 10–11 Clausen, H. N., 70, 75–77 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 13 Croce, Benedetto, 41 Delitzsch, Franz, 160–61, 190n, 191n, 204n, 261, 339n Delitzsch, Friedrich, 339 Descartes, René, 13–14 Dibelius, Martin, 313 Dorner, Isaak A., 18, 111, 123, 198, 202n Durkheim, Émile, 342–43 Ernst, Adam, 180–81 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 14, 99n, 342 Fichte, Johann G., 45, 68 Fiddes, Paul, 62n Forde, Gerhard, 197n, 200n, 204n, 207n Foucault, Michel, 41n Francke, August H., 12, 133, 181, 325 Frank, Reinhold, 102, 191n Friedrich II (king of Prussia), 25

356 Friedrich Wilhelm (elector of Brandenburg), 25 Friedrich Wilhelm III (king of Prussia), 32–33 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 42n, 206n Garff, Joakim, 232n, 233 Gay, Craig, 53n Geijer, Erik G., 328, 341 Gerhard, Johann, 11, 225 Göschel, Karl F., 126 Gossner, Johannes E., 256–57, 272 Grabau, Andreas A., 216–17, 230 Grundtvig, Johann, 67–69 Grundtvig, Nikolai F. S., 17, 67–85, 241–42, 297 Grunow, Elenore v., 32 Hamann, Johan G., 127 Harless, Adolf v., 18, 102, 107, 143–76, 191n, 203n Harms, Claus, 16 Harnack, Adolf v., 114, 118, 293, 333 – and Kähler, 313, 321–22 – and Theodosius Harnack, 255, 256n, 257, 259–60, 263–65, 273 – and Ritschl, 19 – and Söderblom, 328, 347 Harnack, Theodosius A., 16, 18, 159–60, 191n, 202n, 255–74 Hefner, Philip, 282 Hegel, Georg W. F., 7–8, 20, 41–66 – and Baur, 17, 89–90 – and Beck, 121, 126, 134–35 – and Hofmann, 189–90, 197, 199n, 205, 207 – and Kähler, 309, 313, 321 – and Kierkegaard, 233–35, 239 – and Luther, 43–48, 50, 52–54, 57, 60–61, 63–66 – and Ritschl, 279 – and Schleiermacher, 16, 27–28, 44 – and Thomasius, 99 Heiler, Friedrich, 333, 349 Hein, Martin, 99n, 117n, 147n, 149n, 174n, 197n

Index of Persons

Hengstenberg, Ernst, 17–19, 93n, 124, 190, 192, 195, 258 Herder, Johann G., 43n, 68, 79 Herrmann, Wilhelm, 18–19, 293, 319, 321, 328 Hirsch, Emanuel, 197n Hodgson, Peter, 41n, 55n, 91, 93n Höfling, Johann W. F., 144, 147n, 191n, 260, 265n Hofmann, Johannes C. K. v., 8, 18, 20, 189– 211 – and Harless, 143 – and Harnack, 261 – and Kähler, 319 – and Löhe, 109 – and Luther, 16, 272 – and Thomasius, 107, 112n, 117n – and Volck, 262 Holl, Karl, 16, 276, 293 Hollaz, David, 11, 12n, 178 Holtzmann, Heinrich J., 312 Hume, David, 342 Hutter, Leonhard, 113 Irenaeus, 70, 74, 80, 312 Jordan, Hermann, 99n, 100n, 101, 103–4, 109, 120 Jüngel, Eberhard, 43, 64, 65n Kähler, Martin, 8, 19, 21, 111n, 207, 309–26 Kant, Immanuel, 7–8, 13, 15, 20 – and Baur, 91–92, 96 – and Hegel, 41, 43n, 45–53, 59–60, 62–63 – and Hofmann, 190, 193, 195 – and Kähler, 309, 321 – and Ritschl, 18 – and Schleiermacher, 23, 26–29, 31 – and Söderblom, 343 Kantzenbach, Friedrich W., 144n, 145n, 148n, 165n, 186n, 191n, 203n Käsemann, Ernst, 90, 93n, 96n Kidd, Benjamin, 345 Kierkegaard, Michael P., 232, 235 Kierkegaard, Peter, 232–33, 241–42

357

Index of Persons

Kierkegaard, Søren, 19–20, 67, 72, 73n, 74, 80, 231–53, 319, 328 Knapp Georg C, 99–100 Köstlin, Karl W. G., 121 Krafft, Johann C., 106, 144, 152, 178, 184, 189 Krauth, Charles P., 11, 17, 295–308 Krauth, Harriet R., 308 Krummacher, Friedrich W., 258, 272 Kümmel, Werner G., 90n, 92n, 96n Landerer, Maximilian A. v., 123 Lehmus, Emilie, 99, 101 Lehmus, Theodor, 99, 101, 105–6 Leibniz, Gottfried, 14, 26 Lessing, Gotthold E., 15, 20, 45–49, 52, 59, 70n, 87, 96, 195, 319 Lindbeck, George, 23–24 Löhe, Wilhelm, 18, 109, 146, 177–88, 216– 17, 220, 265n Loisy, Alfred, 330, 332 Lotz, David, 276, 277n Louise (queen of Prussia), 32 Ludwig I (king of Bavaria), 180 Luther, Martin, 8–11, 16, 54, 104, 113, 184, 187, 312 – and Baur, 87, 92–93, 95, 97–98 – and Beck, 139–40 – and Grundtvig, 67–71, 76, 78–79, 85 – and Kähler, 318, 322–23 – and Krauth, 300, 302 – and Harless, 158–60, 162, 164–69, 175 – and Theodosius Harnack, 255, 260n, 261–63, 265–66, 270–72 – and Hegel, 43–48, 50, 52–54, 57, 60–61, 63–66 – and Hofmann, 16, 187n, 203–4 – and Kierkegaard, 242–52 – and Ritschl, 275–76, 280, 282–84, 289–90, 292–94 – and Schleiermacher, 24n, 31 – and Söderblom, 329, 331, 337, 341–43, 346 – and Thomasius, 115 – and Walther, 218, 220, 228

Mackay, W. P., 328–29 Marheineke, Philip, 100 Martensen, H. L., 234, 240, 244, 247–48 Marx, Karl, 14, 41, 43 Maximilian I (king of Bavaria), 185 Maximilian II (king of Bavaria), 146 Melanchthon, Philip, 9–10, 139–40, 230, 288 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 41n Möhler, Johann A., 92–93 Møller, P. L., 239 Moody, Dwight L., 329 Muhlenberg, Henry M., 181, 305, 308 Müller, Julius, 310 Mynster, J. P., 240–41, 244 Napoleon, 13, 32, 104, 184, 189 Naumann, Friedrich, 330, 345 Neander, August, 100, 118 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 14, 43, 206–7, 334 Nitzsch, Carl I., 257 Nygren, Anders, 250 Oettingen, Alexander v., 256n, 259, 260n, 262 Old, Hughes O., 230 Olsen, Regine, 236–37, 239 Olson, Alan, 46n O’Regan, Cyril, 43n, 44, 46, 49n, 55 Origen, 114–15 Ötinger, Christoph F., 141 Otto, Rudolf, 333, 341, 344 Philippi, Friedrich A., 140, 202, 258, 270, 272 Placher, William, 53 Plato, 27, 32, 43n, 114, 250–51, 280 Plitt, Gustav L., 119 Quenstedt, Johann A., 11 Ranke, Leopold v., 190 Raumer, Karl v., 178, 184, 189–90 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 19, 293 Reimarus, H. S., 15 Reimer, George, 30–31 Richmond, James, 293–94

358 Ricoeur, Paul, 205n Riske-Braun, U., 157n Ritschl, Albrecht, 18–20, 205, 272–73, 275– 94, 311, 316, 321, 325, 328–29 Rothe, Richard, 19, 309–10, 320–21 Sabatier, Auguste, 330 Sailer, Johann M., 106 Sasse, Hermann, 217 Schellbach, Martin, 192n Schelling, Friedrich W. J., 43n, 45, 310n – and Baur, 88–89 – and Grundtvig, 68 – and Harless, 147–48 – and Hofmann, 190, 197, 207 – and Kähler, 309 – and Ritschl, 279 Schlatter, Adolf, 96, 205 Schlegel, Friedrich, 27 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., 7–8, 16, 20, 23–40, 75 – and Baur, 88–89 – and Dorner, 18 – and Harless, 143, 147, 149, 170n, 174 – and Hegel, 44, 59–61 – and Hofmann, 189–90, 192, 205, 209 – and Schleiermacher, 31 – and Kähler, 313, 319, 321–22 – and Pietism, 12 – and Ritschl, 278–80 – and Thomasius, 100 – and Söderblom, 328, 331–32, 343 Schmid, Christian F., 122–23, 141 Schmid, Heinrich, 11n, 191n, 261 Schmucker, Beale Melanchthon, 296, 298 Schmucker, Samuel S., 17, 295–96, 298–99, 304, 308 Schultz, Robert, 159n, 165n, 203n Schwegler, Albert, 123, 281 Schweitzer, Albert, 15, 311, 314–15 Seeberg, Reinhold, 119, 174n Seiss, Joseph A., 296, 298, 300, 307 Semler, Johann, 15 Socinus, Faustus, 14 Sockness, Brent, 32n, 33n Socrates, 60, 234–35, 250

Index of Persons

Söderblom, Nathan, 7–8, 19, 327–50 Spaeth, Adolph, 298n, 300, 308 Spener, Philipp, 12–13, 133, 325 Spinoza, Benedict B., 26, 43n, 49, 58, 309 Stahl, Friedrich J., 144, 172, 265n Steffens, Henrik, 68, 101 Stephan, Martin, 215–17, 219, 222 Strauss, David F., 20–21 – and Baur, 95 – and Beck, 121, 125, 130, 134 – and Harless, 147, 150 – and Hofmann, 195, 207, 209 – and Kähler, 309, 311 Strauss, Gerhard F., 257–58 Sundkler, Bengt, 331n, 346 Thielicke, Helmut, 206n Tholuck, August, 19, 44, 100, 144, 149–50, 152, 310–11 Thomasius, Friedrich, 99, 108 Thomasius, Gottfried, 8, 18, 144, 147n, 191n, 99–120 – and Harless, 151n – and Theodosius Harnack, 260–61, 272 – and Hofmann, 202n Tillich, Paul, 19, 252, 310n Tracy, David, 205n Troeltsch, Ernst, 207n, 293, 318–19, 326 Wach, Joachim, 192, 206n Walther, Carl F. W. W., 11, 17, 20, 213–30, 296 Walther, Otto H., 214–16, 219 Wapler, Paul, 189n, 193n, 200n, 205n Weizsäcker, Karl H. v., 141 Welch, Claude, 15, 43n, 118 Wenz, Gunther, 197n, 204n Wette, Wilhelm M. L. de, 122 Wichern, Johann, 19, 192 Wickert, Ulrich, 89n, 91n Willich, Henriette v., 33 Winter, Friedrich W., 159n, 175n, 191n Wolff, Christian, 14–15, 20, 232 Wolff, Otto, 160n, 197n, 268n, 271n Wright, N. T., 96

359

Index of Persons

Wyneken, Friedrich C. D., 179, 217, 220, 230 Yeats, W. B., 206n

Zahn-Harnack, Agnes v., 256n Zezschwitz, Gerhard v., 102, 191n Zinzendorf, Nikolaus L. v., 12, 325 Zwingli, Ulrich, 53–54, 230, 275, 284