Volume 15, Issue 2

Identity and Individuality are key subjects of modernity. They are categorically unfolded by Schleiermacher's conception, that individual identity is constituted by an ethic process and is closely linked to its complementary, the universal of sociality. In the first instance this essay explicates this conception in the poeticised romantic early work ‘Monologen’ and thereupon it connects with his mellower dogmatic-theological main work ‘Glaubenslehre’. In the ‘Monologen’ individuality is constituted by imagining a human transcendental ‘realm of spirits’ as the background for looking at the individuals in the ‘world’. On the other hand the ‘Glaubenslehre’ interlaces ethic-religious processes of the constitution of identity with institutionalised communication between empirically different individuals in the context of ecclesiology. Associated with a coupling of ‘spirit’ and ‘world’ this makes a structural openness possible for the real plurality right up to divergence and difference.

This paper addresses the second and third volumes of Edward Bouverie Pusey's Eirenicon, which were published as open letters to John Henry Newman. Written in the run up to the First Vatican Council in 1870, these books discuss respectively the Marian dogmas and infallibility. Like the first volume they reveal the profound difference between Pusey's Anglo-Catholicism, which was a ‘catholicism of the word’ defined by the explicit doctrinal formulations of the undivided church, and Newman's Roman Catholicism with its emphasis on the doctrine of development. Compared to the first volume, which provoked significant discussion, the impact of the second and third volumes was modest primarily because the declaration of infallibility meant that ecumenical discussion no longer seemed possible. Pusey's hopes for reunion were completely dashed and he removed himself from ecumenical discussion permanently.

Commentators agree that Kierkegaard's “second authorship” (1847–1855) emphasizes the imitatio Christi. But they disagree in their understanding of conforming one's life to Christ. Does the authorship end with a summons to martyrdom (Marie Thulstrup) or with heightened love of the neighbor (Jamie Ferreira)? The paper argues that Kierkegaard's appropriation of the imitatio theme in pietist literature (especially inspired by Johannes Tauler) shows that human limitation and divine supremacy are the hallmarks of imitating Christ. Both potential martyrdom and the practice of the love of the neighbor rest upon submission to God and reliance upon divine grace.

Even the critics of Dutch Reformed theologian, politician, and publicist Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) acknowledge his great power of oratory. This essay examines the nature of Kuyper's rhetoric in a mythopoetic perspective that sees its inspiration in a romantic understanding of artistic inspiration and vivid representations of reality. Long-term editor of De Standaard, Kuyper's stalwart defence of Calvinism against Modernism drew from the struggles of Dutch history (the 16th-century siege of Leyden) and from his personal history to espouse strong views that are couched in military as well as organic metaphors. His mastery of the psychology of mass communication enabled Kuyper to accomplish many, though not all, of his political goals.

The emergence of a school around the theology of Albrecht Ritschl remains an important aspect of modern Protestant theology. On the basis of previously unpublished correspondence between Ritschl and some of his most celebrated students, we are able to investigate anew the circumstances under which the Ritschlian school was formed, and to ask why Ritschl's theology attracted a new generation of theologians and historians of theology. By focusing on Wilhelm Herrmann, one of the most significant systematic theologians of the Ritschlian school, this article shows how Ritschl's attempt to overcome apologetics and classical metaphysics as well as his way of correlating religion and morality opened a distinctive and appealing alternative to the various theological schools of his time.