Confessional Lutheranism and German Theological Wissenschaft

Adolf Harleß, August Vilmar, and Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann

James Ambrose Lee II

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110761245
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: World History

Die Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann bietet ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Arbeiten in Systematischer Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. Die Reihe steht allen Aspekten einer weit verstandenen Systematischen Theologie offen, insbesondere Forschungen zu Dogmatik, Ethik, allen Epochen der Theologiegeschichte und Religionsphilosophie sowie auch solchen Arbeiten, die bibelwissenschaftliche Perspektiven mit theologischen Fragen verbinden. Der Name der Reihe erinnert an das Erbe des einflussreichen Verlegers Alfred Töpelmann (1867-1954).

1 Introduction

By 1848 the burgeoning Neolutheran confessional awakening was gathering momentum.¹ Following the Leipzig ecclesial conference (Kirchentag) in August 1848, held in distinction to the larger and more general conference in Wittenberg the following September, the participating Lutheran theologians furthered the process of establishing trans-territorial unity amongst similar minded Lutherans.² However, by the early 1850s various controversies had inhibited the development of this Lutheran movement. At the heart of these disputes was a debate that erupted following the 1852 publication of the first volume of Der Schriftbeweis, authored by Erlangen faculty member Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810 – 1877). Hofmann’s antagonists challenged the integrity of his commitment to the Lutheran Confessions, even to the point of accusing Hofmann of breaching the boundaries of orthodox Christian dogma. The issue of debate was Hofmann’s position on the doctrine of the atonement. As summarized by Hofmann’s first antagonist Friedrich Adolf Philippi (1809 – 1882), professor at the University of Rostock, “We believe to have shown the evidence that Hofmann’s doctrine of the atonement and justification—not only according to form, but also according to content and essence—departs from the faith and confession of the Lutheran church; indeed, in principle, it is antithetical to them.”³

The general contours of Hofmann’s atonement debate are already well established.⁴ By 1858, years before the atonement controversy reached any form of resolution, Karl Weizsäcker published a forty page article in the Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie titled, “Um was handelt es sich im Streit um die Versöhnungslehre?,” wherein he outlined the theological and literary debate that Hofmann’s theology caused.⁵ By the first decade of the twentieth century, Hofmann’s atonement theology and the subsequent debate had been well catalogued and studied alongside the thought of fellow nineteenth-century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl.⁶ Although Hofmann’s legacy never rivaled that of Schleiermacher and Ritschl, his thought, and specifically the atonement controversy, still arouses scholarly interest.⁷

A consequence of the caustic debate that erupted over Hofmann’s doctrine of the atonement was the awareness of a greater theological diversity amid this coterie of Lutheran theologians. The recognition of this division occurred as other theological fault lines came to the surface.⁸ A shared denouncement of forced Protestant Unions (e. g. the Prussian Union), a rejection of modern university theology, and a commitment to the confessional texts of the Lutheran church, proved to be an unsteady foundation for grounding confessional and theological unity.

Returning to the debate over Hofmann’s doctrine of the atonement, when viewed through the prism of nineteenth-century confessional Lutheran consensus and dissimilarity, one is able to discern a concomitant subject of theological dispute, entwined within the atonement controversy, that was often overshadowed by the vehement nature of the atonement controversy. Threads of this subject are clearly observable throughout the publication that kindled the atonement controversy, Hofmann’s Der Schriftbeweis. Properly speaking, the doctrine of the atonement was not the subject of this work. As evident in the subtitle—Ein theologischer Versuch—this volume represented Hofmann’s “attempt” to establish what he referred to as a Schriftbeweis, that is, a work of systematic theology purposed to depict a comprehensive, unified presentation of the Christian truth. In other words, as he explicitly stated on the first page, in place of haphazard amalgamations of individual doctrinal propositions, Hofmann intended to present theology as “a wissenschaftlich whole,” where individual doctrinal propositions only have relevance in so far as they belong to this structured, unified, interrelated wissenschaftlich body.⁹

Already apparent on the first page and throughout the introduction (Wesen und Gesetz des Schriftbeweis) is that Hofmann had not penned Der Schriftbeweis merely for the purpose of critiquing and revising the Lutheran theology of the atonement.¹⁰ Instead, Hofmann intended this work as an example of theological Wissenschaft. More specifically, Hofmann intended to provide a systematic theology that was a “wissenschaftlich statement of Christianity.”¹¹ In fact, some of Hofmann’s interlocutors, specifically his fellow Erlangen faculty member Franz Delitzsch (1813 – 1890), and his former Mecklenburg colleague Theodor Kliefoth (1810 – 1895), engaged and criticized Hofmann over the concept of Wissenschaft that undergirded this theological work and the entirety of his theological system, of which the doctrine of the atonement was a part.¹² Nevertheless, even though some of Hofmann’s contemporaries publicly questioned his understanding of Wissenschaft, due to the ardent nature of the atonement controversy that followed the publication of Der Schriftbeweis, these observations and criticisms were marginalized. Hofmann’s Der Schriftbeweis ignited an argument over the Lutheran doctrine of the atonement that was so cantankerous and protracted, that it not only set different theological faculties at odds,¹³ even Hofmann’s Erlangen colleagues became critics of his position.¹⁴ The result was that any potential conversation and debate over the subject of Wissenschaft was wholly eclipsed by the atonement controversy.

The employment of the term Wissenschaft alerts the reader of the necessity to situate Hofmann’s thought into a larger historical framework.¹⁵ Hofmann’s goal, to demonstrate the “wissenschaftlich proof” for “a wissenschaftlich whole” helps to locate his text within a much broader conversation that transpired throughout the German intellectual milieu over the nature of the academic enterprise. Already by the end of the eighteenth-century German culture had begun to undergo a “scientization” (Verwissenschaftlichung) of the entire landscape of learning and research. This German phenomenon of Verwissenschaftlichung was so sweeping that Thomas Albert Howard has characterized the development of Wissenschaft as a constituent element of a nascent German identity that sought to revitalize a German and Prussian intellectual and academic culture in contrast to and in rivalry with French universities and models of education.¹⁶ In his 1798 Der Streit der Fakultäten, Kant threw down the gauntlet, by calling for a restructuring of the German university, and a reordering of disciplines according to the criterion of Wissenschaft. His challenge was accepted: the subject of reforming the university according to the modern standards of Wissenschaft was the topic of much discourse throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, with the 1810 formation of the University of Berlin functioning as the exemplar for the implementation of a new vision of the German university modeled in accordance with Wissenschaft.¹⁷ Throughout the “long nineteenth century” growing enamor over Wissenschaft forced the German intellectual community to confront certain definitive questions regarding the definition of Wissenschaft, the relationship between the university and Wissenschaft, how an academic discipline achieves the status of a Wissenschaft, and what was the nature of the relationship between Wissenschaft, individual disciplines, and the university.

The foundation of the University of Berlin was a monumental coup for proponents of contemporary Wissenschaft. It was the realization of an institution dedicated to training and research for the cultivation of universal knowledge, intended to revitalize German academic culture, in service of the greater good of the German peoples. The university symbolized the advent of a new era of education, research, knowledge, and Wissenschaft; however, the theoretical grounds that supported its formation were neither stable nor homogenous. Todd Weir,¹⁸ Andreas Daum,¹⁹ Frederick Gregory,²⁰ Kurt Bayertz, Myriam Gerhard, and Walter Jaeschke²¹ have contributed to depicting the rise of a new conception of Wissenschaft, that was propelled by a materialistic view of nature, absent the philosophical moorings of German idealism. Proponents of this new definition of Wissenschaft lauded the research-driven approach to knowledge, based off empirical observation and practice, in place of speculative philosophical theories indebted to idealism. Where at the beginning of the century philosophy had overtaken theology as the “queen of the sciences”—embodied in the formation of the University of Berlin—by the 1840s, philosophy lost its claim atop the university as the Wissenschaft der Wissenschaften, eclipsed by the ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I The Emergence and Development of German Theological Wissenschaft
• Part II Wissenschaft and the Confessional Lutheran Awakening
• Bibliography
• Person Index