The contributors of this volume inquire into the contested concept of scientific theology ( wissenschaftliche Theologie ), the rise and fall of historicism, and the role of historical and critical theological methods in the modern research university in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Questions surrounding the genesis, development, and viability of modern academic theology have drawn renewed and heightened interest in recent years. Over the past decade, an increasing number of detailed studies have inquired into the emergence of scientific theology (
wissenschaftliche Theologie ) in the nineteenth century and its uneasy relationship with the shifting intellectual culture of the modern research university. This volume presents a unique contribution to this developing conversation, offering a focused treatment of the many-sided debate surrounding the tasks and limitations of historical and critical theology as it develops in the modern German university during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The fifteen chapters of the volume examine the challenges of the historical study of theology and the contested concept of scientific theology in the writings of foundational figures such as Kant, Schleiermacher, Baur, Ritschl, Harnack, Troeltsch, Barth, and Bonhoeffer. Yet it also attends to ongoing debates concerning the relationship between supernatural revelation and empirical-historical research, the rise and fall of historicism in theology, the competing locales of church and university, the appropriation of historical methods within Protestant and Catholic theological faculties, and the place and function of theology in the increasingly specialized modern research university. As the essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary discussions of the place of the study of theology and religion in the modern university.
Table of contents:
Kevin M. Vander Schel/Michael P. DeJonge: Editors' Introduction -
Michael C. Legaspi: From Thomasius to Semler: History, Civil Philosophy, and Theology in the German Enlightenment -
Jacqueline Mariña: Kant, Schleiermacher, and the Study of Theology -
Kevin M. Vander Schel: Schleiermacher's »Historicism«: Historical Criticism and the Modern Study of Theology -
Peter C. Hodgson: F.C. Baur and Historical Theology in the Nineteenth Century University -
Johannes Zachhuber: Theology and History in the Controversy between Albrecht Ritschl and Eduard Zeller -
Grant Kaplan: Theology as
Wissenschaft in the Catholic Tübingen School: J.S. Drey and J. Kuhn -
Zachary Purvis: Where is August Neander in Modern History? Berlin's First Church Historian -
Matthew Muller/Kenneth Parker: Newman, Theological Development, and the Catholic University -
Mark D. Chapman: The Impact of German Historicism in British Theology -
Annette G. Aubert: Historical Theology in America: Henry Boynton Smith, a Transatlantic Bridge Builder, 1840-1870 -
Asher D. Biemann: »A Science Without Limits«: Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and the Problem of »Jewish Scholarship« -
Jonathan D. Teubner: Jesus and the Ascent of
Wissenschaft : A Reassessment of Adolf von Harnack's
wissenschaftliche Theologie -
Christophe Chalamet: Karl Barth on Theology and History -
Christian Polke: God, History, and Value: Revisiting Troeltsch's Historicism -
Michael P. DeJonge: Bonhoeffer on Faith and History: The Past Made Future in the Present Christ
