Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Juni/2023 |
Spalte: | 600-602 |
Kategorie: | Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Lee II, James Ambrose |
Titel/Untertitel: | Confessional Lutheranism and German Theological Wissenschaft. Adolf Harleß, August Vilmar, and Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann. |
Verlag: | Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2022. X, 307 S. = Theolgische Bibliothek Töpelmann, 198. Geb. EUR 89,95. ISBN 9783110760538. |
Rezensent: | Paul Silas Peterson |
In James Ambrose Lee’s published dissertation from St. Louis University he addresses a very important and difficult subject, the German Protestant theological struggle with an understanding of theology as »science«. L. left the German terms Wissenschaft and wissenschaftlich in German, which is somewhat understandable, yet also occasionally laborious, given that it is used in every paragraph, and often multiple times in one sentence. »Science« (or in the given case, »natural science«) would have been entirely sufficient for his readership. The translations are good, yet Hofmann’s central term »Tatbestand« (»the matter of fact«) is also left in German.
The study’s introduction could have spent more time on the terminological continuity with Latin language in Lutheran orthodoxy in the seventeenth century, and the normal prolegomenal use of the term scientia in reference to theology. The first sixty pages introduce the term »science« in the German context of the Enlightenment before summarizing Kant’s and Schelling’s conceptions of religious knowledge, the university and the place of theology at the university, drawing upon many sources and especially Thomas Howard’s Protestant theology and the making of the German university (2007) and Charles McClelland’s State, Society, and University in Germany 1700–1914 (1980). This culminates in a vision of theology within the universal culture of education and research at the outset of the nineteenth century in deep collaboration with philosophy and history. Shifting from the descriptive to the normative, L. concludes that in this »the scope of theology has been severely curtailed« (60). Of course, many would argue that the discipline of theology was saved from exclusion by this, or put on a surer foundation. The status of theology at the German universities in the nineteenth century is unintelligible without the throne-altar-alliance in the background, which could have been more sufficiently addressed. The following section turns mostly to Schleiermacher’s conceptualization of theology within the university, arguing that he proposed an »accommodation model« (66). Yet did Schleiermacher see religion as operating on the same or a similar realm of science, to which it would need to accommodate itself? Schleiermacher seems to reject this idea in his Speeches. The proceeding section focuses on the natural sciences in the nineteenth century. L. draws attention to the rise of »mechanistic materialism, that prohibited the possibility of any transcendental, immaterial substance that could not be observed.« (87). How common was this view in the nineteenth century?
The following pages turn to F. C. Bauer’s religiously imbued idealistic theory of history and the critical thought of D. F. Strauß, before addressing Ritschl. L.’s arguments are very convincing when he shows how the assertion of the scientific nature of theology became both a touchstone and a self-description of the intellectual discourse in the nineteenth century in theological faculties. Yet he does not address the underlying or perhaps parallel phenomenon, which was just as, or even more influential in the transformative development of religious thought at this time: liberalism. The emphasis on the freedom of research is another expression of the omnipresent spirit of liberalism and Enlightenment (sapere aude!), which some Protestant theologians were learning to embrace. In the following section, part two of the dissertation, L. changes his field of view, addresses the emergence of neo-Lutheranism in the nineteenth century, the confessional conflict following the emergence of ecclesial unions, and then, following this, the nineteenth century awakening/revivalism as the seedbed of the neo-Lutheran program (115). The next thirty pages are committed to Harleß, focusing especially on the conception of the theological encyclopedia, and an understanding of theology as a form of scientific knowledge that has the Christian religion as its content. L. draws attention to his creative work, the integration of themes such as experience and his understanding of the mutability of the presentation of dogma’s absolute truth (146), while showing how he maintained conservative interpretations of these impulses and held them in an ecclesiological framework. The scientific discourse is addressed at the beginning of his encyclopedia. Yet it is not entirely clear how this issue flows into the latter explication of this work. What Harleß was doing in the passages addressed was responding to the challenges posed by liberal theology and the historical critical method. More could have been said about the place of the encyclopedia in theological education in the nineteenth century. Harleß’s book was written for students in this course – who were these students, what was their background?
The next forty pages address August Vilmar, and his transition from critical rationalism to neo-Lutheranism and a theology of »facts« (divine acts) not rhetoric: »Vilmar held that true knowledge is only possible through faith.« (172) Here L. shows very convincingly how Vilmar engaged the discourse about theology as science, and rejected it. More could have been said here about the intellectual background that Vilmar was locking into, which is already found a generation before. The treatment of Vilmar’s theology that follows does not connect organically with the previous remarks on science and the scientific nature of theology. L. provides a summary of central dogmatic themes, addressing his understanding of experience, reception of Luther, articulation of justification and embrace and then rejection of Schleiermacher, which he held to be »intrinsically flawed« (187). At the end of the section on Vilmar, L. returns to the question of the scientific nature of theology (191–192). Vilmar seems to follow a definitional limitation strategy, and affirms the idea of theology as science, but only if the definition of science and scientific method are drawn from theology (as knowledge of the »formulae« of the Christian faith). Here as well, the elephant in the room is the place of the historical critical method and liberalism in theology. Was the debate about scientific method with Vilmar only a secondary issue in his primary battel against liberalism and historicism? Hofmann, by contrast, proposed a national vision of science as service, as L. sum- marizes: »Wissenschaft is intended for the good of the common life of the German people.« (205). Of course, the lectures from which the main citations are taken in this sense were delivered to the whole university, and not specifically concerned with theology. L. often claims that Hofmann’s argument was for humanity in general, but the citations suggest a more national pattern of thought, typical of his generation. L.’s following summaries of the major aspects of his theology are not necessarily related to these claims about science. Later L. turns to the central question and claims that for Hofmann Christianity is understood as containing within itself its own ground of science (222–227), theology is the scientific »expression of one’s personal Christianity« (225), yet not in the sense of Schleiermacher, as L. emphasizes, for the »object of theology remains the Tatbestand« (226), as well as the life of the church (227).
The following seventh chapter is a very instructive summary of Hofmann’s theology, yet the inner link to the discussion of science could have been more strongly established. L. follows others in seeing similarity and dissimilarity between Schelling and Hofmann, as addressed in an excursus (although direct mentions of Schelling in Hofmann’s work are not addressed). Surprisingly, in the conclusion L. holds that even Vilmar was integrating »modern thought« (282) – yet he seems to have demonstrated a rejection of the same.
L.’s work is a major attempt at situating this very interesting (and sadly, mostly forgotten) strand of theology across a broad his- torical sweep of modern history. It is highly instructive, and truly educational in its own right. L. is very knowledgeable of the debates he addresses, but there are so many issues, figures (Harleß alone could have been one book) and questions in play, and the time span is not short, that the dissertation often moves quickly. The political issues are only briefly mentioned; the place of the Jews in their thought is essentially left out, as well as German na-tionalism, racism and anti-socialist thinking.
The strength of the monograph is its reconstruction of the specific theological profile of the Erlangen School, a mostly forgotten tradition of innovative and conservative Lutheran dogmatics – and for this it deserves high praise. I am not alone in eagerly awaiting L.’s next study.