Volume 9, Issue 2

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem's Betrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion was a bestseller of the German Enlightenment, although it is a theological book. In this article, his Betrachtungen is treated as a text that tries to synthesize the newly established philosophy of history with more or less traditional theological patterns. Jerusalem uses the argument of universal development and progress in history to demonstrate the evidence of divine providence. His book thus resembles Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts , which it may have influenced. The main purpose of Jerusalem is to calm and pacify the individual's soul. He wants to prove that the individual's life fits into the general order of history, which is also the purpose of ‘profane’ philosophy of history in German Enlightenment. Jerusalem's neological philosophy of history provides new answers to the problem of evil after the decline of a metaphysical theodicy in the tradition of Leibniz.

Zusammenfassung Das Thema des Gottesdienstes hat in der neueren theologiegeschichtlichen Forschung bislang keine hinreichende Beachtung gefunden. Die Diskussionen über die Notwendigkeit des Gottesdienstes, seinen Charakter und seinen Symbolgehalt führten am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts zu einer grundsätzlichen Erörterung des positiven Charakters des Christentums und seiner institutionellen Rolle in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Die Schriften Immanuel Kants, Carl Friedrich Stäudlins und Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Novalis) belegen den damaligen Wandel der Gottesdienstauffassung, indem sie die Ideen der Französischen Revolution und deren Implikationen für das religiöse Leben thematisieren. Kants Unterscheidung von politischer und moralischer Religion nutzte Stäudlin, um die theophilanthropische Form eines aufklärerischen Gottesdienstes zu kritisieren. Novalis beurteilte die Theophilanthropie, die er als Negation jeglicher genuinen Religion ansah, ebenfalls kritisch. In Kants, Stäudlins und Novalis' Stellungnahmen zu Fragen des Gottesdienstes deutet sich zugleich der Übergang von aufklärerischen Religionskategorien zu frühromantischen Religionsmotiven an.

The Protestant sources used by Max Weber in his early writings, especially The Protestant Ethic , are well known. They show his familiarity with the theological discourses of his day. Weber's conception of religious individualism and his activities in church politics, e.g. the Evangelisch-Sozialer-Kongress , are the result of his juxtaposition of Lutheranism and Calvinism, of active and passive states of religiousness. This itself was deeply influenced by nineteenth-century Protestant theology. Due to this, it is common to speak of Weber's affinity with German liberal theology. Although Weber's famous lectures on science and politics as a vocation, delivered in Munich in 1917 and 1919, have been called, the authentic offspring of The Protestant Ethic ‘ (Friedrich H. Tenbruck), the lectures have not yet been properly researched with respect to their theological sources. This paper argues that in Science as a Vocation Weber, firstly, regards modern Protestant theology and its distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ as a fundamental insight favouring the rise of modern science. This has to be understood in the context of the debate on the ‘revolution in science’ in the early twentieth century, when Weber passionately defended the right of specialised science. Secondly, Weber had been increasingly influenced by Julius Wellhausen's work on the history of Israel, especially his interpretation of the prophets, which Weber studied intensively for his own work on ancient Judaism. Wellhausen's opposition of the prophet's heroic individualism, on the one hand, and institutionalized religion, on the other, affects Weber's later interest to clearly distinguish between the Christian ethics of brotherhood and the needs of modern politics. This is of fundamental import for the well-known differentiation between ‘the ethic of principled convictions’ ( Gesinnungsethik ) and ‘the ethic of responsibility’ ( Verantwortungsethik ). This paper puts forward the thesis that in the lecture Politics as a Vocation Weber develops a normative and radical concept of religion and theology, which leads him to criticize the conception of liberal theology within its own terms – despite the fact that it was a major source for his own work.

The Jena philosopher Rudolf Eucken (1846–1926) was among the most important philosophy of life authors of the late 19 th /early 20 th centuries. His extensive literary estate has until now only been selectively evaluated. The present contribution introduces the literary estate comprehensively for the first time, after it was put in order and catalogued at the end of the 1990s. Individual parts of the literary estate (correspondence, working manuscripts, documents on the life and professional papers, collections of material, the secret literary estate of Irene and Ida Eucken, material on the Eucken League) are described in a detailed manner. The significance of this fund of sources for research into the German educated classes, into the international contacts of German scholars, as well as into the history of modern theology and philosophy is thereby made evident.

Adolf Deißmann (1866–1937), New Testament scholar in Heidelberg and Berlin as well as one of the most important figures in the ecumenical movement after World War I, studied with the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen (1844–1918) in Marburg and felt a lifelong debt to him. Documents presented here from Deißmann's literary estate not only convey insight into the personal relationship between Deißmann and Cohen, but also show the connections between Cohen's philosophy and Deißmann's engagement in Friedrich Naumann's National Social Union as well as his research on the New Testament. The edition thus serves at the same time as a contribution to the controversial matter of the relationship between Kulturprotestantismus and liberal Judaism around 1900.

Jan Rohls, Protestantische Theologie der Neuzeit, Bd. 1: Die Voraussetzungen und das 19. Jahrhundert/Bd. 2: Das 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen (J. C. B. Mohr [Siebeck]) 1997, XXIV + 892/ XIII + 882 S., ISBN 3-16-146643-8/3-16-146644-6, € 74.00/49.00. ( Arnulf von Scheliha ) Alf Christophersen, Friedrich Lücke (1791–1855). Teil 1: Neutestamentliche Hermeneutik und Exegese im Zusammenhang mit seinem Leben und Werk / Teil 2: Dokumente und Briefe, Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann Band 94/1 und 94/2, Berlin/New York (de Gruyter) 1999, XII und 470; X und 499 S., ISBN 3-110-16278–4, € 128,00. ( Matthias Wolfes )