Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 104:416 (Oct 1947)
Article: Protestant Theology since 1700
Author: Miner Brodhead Stearns

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BSac 104:416 (Oct 47) p. 451

Protestant Theology since 1700

Miner Brodhead Stearns

(Continued from the July-September Number, 1947)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered from 188–226, but in this electronic edition are numbered from 1–39, respectively.}

Ritschl and the Ritschlians

“In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,” according to Mackintosh, “no influence in the field of theology could compare for breadth and vigour, with that of Albrecht Ritschl of Göttingen.”1 In fact, though he died in 1889 (b., 1822) his influence is still felt. He studied under a number of the men already mentioned in this series of articles: Nitzsch, Julius Müller, Rothe, and Baur. He was at first a disciple of Baur, but in the second edition of his Rise of the Old Catholic Church (1857) he “delivered what proved to be a shattering blow to the Tübingen hypothesis as a whole, for he showed that no such conflict existed between Peter and Paul as Baur had taught.”2 His best-known work is his three-volume treatise The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, which began to appear in 1870. The three volumes cover respectively the history, the Biblical basis, and his personal analysis of the doctrines being considered. He also wrote, among other books, a three-volume History of Pietism (1880–1886), a movement incidentally which he detested and therefore could not appreciate, judging from the way it is treated.

Two things which Ritschl particularly and persistently combatted were speculative rationalism, on the one hand, and subjectivism (including mysticism), on the other. Hegelianism was the classic type of the first (and truly we can

BSac 104:416 (Oct 47) p. 452

rejoice that Ritschl had some success in driving it from the field of theology). A false mysticism is also to be deplored, so that we cannot condemn Ritschl for opposing such thought as well, but unfortunately he went much farther and discarded even the idea of personal communion of the soul with Christ—which is the true, Scriptural mysticism.

Ritschl took an excellent starting point for his system of theology: it was not the “Christian consciousness” of the Schleiermacherian school but the gospel given in Jesus Christ. He rightly held that we cannot know God as a redeeming Father apart from Christ. For our knowledge of God and Christianity, indeed, we are confined to the Old and New Testament. All this reasoning promises well, but then the performance was somewhat disappointing. Mackintosh suggests two reasons for Ritschl’s failure to produce a theolo...

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