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Albrecht Ritschl and the Unfinished Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David W. Lotz
David W. Lotz
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY 10027
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Extract

On 10 November 1883, addressing his Göttingen colleagues and students in academic celebration of the quadricentennial of Luther's birth, Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) delivered this remarkable verdict: “The genuine ideas of the Reformation were more concealed than disclosed in the theological works of Luther and Melanchthon.” The Wittenberg reformers themselves, not merely their epigones, had failed to systematize and safeguard those original epoch-making ideas by which they had effected their dramatic reform of religious life within the late medieval church.

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Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 73 , Issue 3-4 , October 1980 , pp. 337 - 372
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1980

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References

1 “Festival Address on the Four-hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Martin Luther,” trans, by Lotz, David W. (from Drei akademische Reden [Bonn, 1887] 5–29Google Scholar) as an Appendix (187–202) to Ritschl and Luther: A Fresh Perspective on Albrecht Ritschl's Theology in the Light of His Luther Study (New York/Nashville, 1974) 195Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited, respectively, as “Luther Address” and Ritschl and Luther.) Other abbreviations used in this essay include: Justification 1 = Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung. Band, Erster: Die Geschichte der Lehre (Bonn, 1870Google Scholar, 1882 = 1889 ), trans, from the 1st ed. by Black, John S., A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (Edinburgh, 1872)Google Scholar. Rechtfertigung 1 (Justification 1 ) = 2d German edition of Die Geschichte der Lehre. Justification 3 = Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung. Band, Dritter: Die positive Entwickelung der Lehre (Bonn, 1874Google Scholar, 1883, 1888 = 1895 ), trans, from the 3d ed. by Mackintosh, H. R. and Macaulay, A. B., The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine (Edinburgh, 1900Google Scholar; reprint ed., Clifton, NJ, 1966). Throughout this essay I have used existing English translations, though only after having checked them against the original texts; occasionally, for stylistic reasons, I have made minor revisions in the translations.

2 “Luther Address,” 195.

3 Ibid. (“This atrophy of Luther's Reformation, transpiring in the very hour of its birth, has been the chief reason for the limitation of its effects.”) Cf. “Prolegomena” to The History of Pietism, trans. Hefner, Philip in Albrecht Ritschl: Three Essays (Philadelphia, 1972) 134: “The distinctiveness of Protestantism is still sufficiently discernible that almost all who count themselves as its adherents recognize that its original manifestation was stunted [eine Verkümmerung] or deformed [eine Missbildung].” (Hereafter cited, respectively, as “Prolegomena” and Three Essays.)Google Scholar

4 ”Luther Address,” 200–201.

5 Ibid., 201.

6 See Ritschl, Otto, Albrecht Ritschls Leben (2 vols.; Freiburg i. B., 1892, 1896) 1. 294: “While Ritschl was still in the process of publishing the second edition of his Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche [1857], he directed his interests to a new field of labor where they were firmly to remain for many years. He began his studies on the doctrine of justification, commencing specifically with his researches into Luther.” (Hereafter cited as Leben.) One may add that Ritschl's Entstehung was designed to answer the question: how did the old Catholic church (of the late second century and following) emerge out of apostolic Christianity? From 1857 until his death, Ritschl's research and writing focused on the parallel questions: how did the Lutheran church emerge out of the Lutheran Reformation? and, what are the lines of continuity and discontinuity between Reformation Christianity, on the one hand, and post-Reformation Protestantism, on the other?Google Scholar

7 See Ritschl and Luther, esp. chap. 2 (“Reformation and Continuing Reformation”) 57–87. One of my chief concerns in this book was to show that the interpretive theme “Ritschl and Luther” or “Ritschl and the Reformation” possesses more heuristic value for the study of Ritschl's theology than do such wellworn themes as “Ritschl and neo-Kantianism” and “Ritschl and Culture Protestantism.” The present essay is intended to serve as a “working brief” for a projected book, of ample proportions, on the topic at hand. The idea of the “unfinished Reformation,” incidentally, has a long and complex history, going back to the so-called radical or left-wing reformers of the sixteenth century (for whom Luther and Zwingli were but “half-way men” who “broke the pope's pitcher but kept the pieces in their hands!”). This notion first occurs within Lutheranism itself in the writings of the Pietists (cf. Spener's Pia Desideria). The theme comes to full flower in the works of the leading representatives of the German Enlightenment, classicism, idealism, and neo-Protestantism from Lessing to Troeltsch. The history of this important motif has yet to be written; but cf. Bornkamm, Heinrich, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte: Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart (2d ed.; Heidelberg, 1970).Google Scholar

8 Cf. Mackintosh, Hugh Ross, Types of Modern Theology: Schleiermacher to Barth (London, 1937) 139. Mackintosh, cotranslator of Justification 3, had recently become a “convert” to the theology of Barth (“… incontestably the greatest figure in Christian theology that has appeared for decades,” 263). Although a sympathetic interpreter, Mackintosh now read Ritschl's works through Barthian spectacles and discovered, not surprisingly, that Ritschl was guilty of rationalistic moralism, historical positivism, and anthropocentrism. See Ritschl and Luther, 25–27, for notice of older (pre-Barth) interpreters who underscored Ritschl's indebtedness to Luther and the Reformation.Google Scholar

9 This interpretation of the inner dynamic of Ritschl's system was already arrived at, and stated with admirable conciseness, by Titius, Arthur, “Albrecht Ritschl und die Gegenwart: Ein Vortrag,” TSK 86 (1913) 67Google Scholar. (See Ritschl and Luther, 161, for a translation of the pertinent passage.) I should here like, once more, to acknowledge my continuing indebtedness to two pathbreaking books which have been too often overlooked in the scholarly literature on nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism: Wolff, Otto, Die Haupttypen der neueren Lutherdeutung (Stuttgart, 1938)Google Scholar; and Loewenich, Walther von, Luther und der Neuprotestantismus (Witten, 1963).Google Scholar

10 Justification 1, 155.

11 Ibid., 121.

12 See Justification 1, 133–46.

13 In Ritschl and Luther, 66–67, I traced Ritschl's “discovery” of this new theme to the year 1873, as disclosed in his letter to Ludwig Diestel dated 20 March 1873. (See Leben, 2. 148.)

14 Rechtfertigung 1, 184–85. By the “footsteps of Paul” Ritschl has in mind esp. Rom 5:1–11; 8:18–39. Melanchthon's “classic documents” are the Augsburg Confession (art. XVI; XX, 24–25; and esp. XXVII, 49–50) and the Apology (art. II).

15 Justification 3, 29. Since “all religions are social” (p. 28), the self-God and self-world relationships must be mediated by the believing community. Hence the church is always the mid-point, the presupposed center, of this “circle.”

16 Justification 3, 168 (italics in original). Here, as in n. 15, I am citing the Eng. trans, of the third ed. of Justification 3 (1888)Google Scholar. However, the first ed. of Justification 3 (1874), 16–17Google Scholar, 51, makes the same points: that every religion takes account of the individual's relationship to the world (Weltanschauung), as well as his dependence on God (Abhängigkeit von Gott); and that the Evangelical Christian, through his experience of Christian freedom, attains spiritual autonomy in the world. (“Die christliche Freiheit, welche der Gerechtfertigte in seinem Vorsehungsglauben und in der Ausübung des Gebetes erlebt, ist der Ausdruck für die religiöse Selbständigkeit in der Welt, zu welcher der ächte Protestantismus seine Bekenner anleitet.”)

17 See Justification 3, 168–77; “Prolegomena,” 85–88; and esp. Die christiliche Vollkommenheit: Ein Vortrag (Bonn, 1874Google Scholar, 1889 ). See also Ritschl's, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion (Bonn, 1875Google Scholar, 1881, 1886 = 1890 = 1895 ), trans, from the 3d ed. by Philip Hefner, Instruction in the Christian Religion, in Three Essays, 221–91. Paragraphs 46–77, pp. 240–54, treat “The Christian Life.” (Hereafter cited as Instruction.)

18 The connection here implied between this Ritschlian motif and Bultmannian existentialism is not fortuitous. On this topic see the insightful remarks of Richmond, James, Ritschl: A Reappraisal (Glasgow, 1978) 293ff.Google Scholar

19 An examination of several of Ritschl's lesser known essays reveals his developing awareness of the centrality of the Reformation Lebensideal for Protestantism. In 1869, writing on “Die Begründung des Kirchenrechtes im evangelischen Begriff von der Kirche,” Ritschl focuses on the same two components of the Reformation principle which he later elaborated in the 1st ed. of Justification 1: “The thought of the believer's justification through Christ is not, taken in itself, the principle of the Reformation of the church, but only in its inseparable connection with the thought of the church as the community of persons sanctified by God.” This essay was originally published in Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht 8 (1869) 220–79Google Scholar, and is reprinted in Ritschl's, Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Ritschl, Otto (Freiburg i. B., 1893) 100–146Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Aufsätze); the quotation above is from Aufsätze, 104–5. In 1876, however, in his essay “Ueber die beiden Principien des Protestantismus” (wherein he denies that the essence of Protestantism can be rightly comprehended through the familiar notion of its “formal” and “material” principles), Ritschl now underscores the pivotal importance of the recently identified third component of the Reformation principle. This essay concludes: “One should ponder, moreover, whether a formula concerning the essence of Protestantism can be proper or practical which is not oriented to the concept of the church and to the Christian ideal of life.” The latter essay was originally published in ZKG 1 (1876) 397–413Google Scholar, and is reprinted in Aufsätze, 234–47; the quotation above is from Aufsätze, 247, italics added.

20 “Prolegomena,” 85.

21 0n the differences between the two life ideals, see “Prolegomena,” 75–76,. 83–89; and Justification 3, 177–81. In addition to Weltflucht, the Catholic ideal includes the monastic practice of mystical contemplation (vita contemplativa), i.e, “the freedom of familiar intercourse with God” accorded to the spiritually perfect (Justification 3, 180). In view of Ritschl's strictures on the Christian life ideal as understood by Calvin and Calvinism (a topic yet to be considered), one must say that, strictly speaking, the Reformation life ideal is that idea of Christian freedom originally articulated by the Lutheran reformers. I should also note that throughout ‘he present essay the term “Reformation,” in keeping with Ritschl's usage, refers to the so-called magisterial Reformation. For Ritschl the radical or left-wing reformers represent a “reform” which is quaiitatively different from that of Luther, Zwingli, and their colleagues. (Cf. “Prolegomena,” 70–83.)

22 See “Luther Address,” 200–202.

23 In Ritschl and Luther, 163–68, I showed that this address is best understood as an almost point-for-point refutation of the vitriolic attack on Reformation-Protestant Christianity launched by Ritschl's Göttingen colleague, Paul de Lagarde. On the Reformation's cultural significance, see “Luther Address,” 189–94.

24 It is the lasting merit of Philip Hefner's book, Faith and the Vitalities of History: A Theological Study Based on the Work of Albrecht Ritschl (New York, 1966), to have uncovered, and underscored, “the system-shaping force of historical factors in Ritschl's theology” (p. 93). Beyond this, however, I have serious reservations about to adequacy, and accuracy, of Mr. Hefner's Ritschl interpretation. See below, n. 60.Google Scholar

25 This same point is made by Schäfer, Rolf, Ritschl: Grundlinien eines fast verschollenen dogmatischen Systems (Tübingen, 1968) 2.Google Scholar

26 For what follows, see Justification 1, 133–39, 167–84; “Prolegomena,” 122–28.

27 On the law-gospel distinction, see Justification 1, 167–84; Justification 3, 159–67. See also Ritschl and Luther, 106–12.) This distinction, geared to the sensibilities of “theologically and religiously uneducated persons,” first received extended practical application in Melanchthon's 1528 Visitation Articles.

28 Justification 1, 135.

29 Justification 1, 183, 330; Rechtfertigung 1, 180–81; Justification 3, 159ff.

30 Justification 1, 199–200; Rechtfertigung 1, 218–24.

31 Justification 1, 159, 198–203; Rechtfertigung 1, 224; Justification 3, 263–64.

32 “Prolegomena,” 127.

33 Justification 3, 6–7, and esp. Theologie und Metaphysik: Zur Verständigung und 4bwehr (Bonn, 1881Google Scholar, 1887 ), trans. Philip Hefner, Theology and Metaphysics, in Three Essays, 151–217 (see 204–8). (Hereafter cited as Theology.) Melanchthon's egacy at this point made it already possible for Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) to identify faith in divine providence as a truth of natural reason and to locate it within the sphere of natural theology (cf. Justification 3, 181).

34 Justification 1, 281.

35 Ibid.

36 “Prolegomena,” 130; Justification 3, 112.

37 Justification 1, 186–88.

38 “Prolegomena,” 134, 137.

39 Ibid., 124.

40 This development is the subject of Ritschl's masterly essay, “Die Entstehung der lutherischen Kirche,” ZKG 1 (1876) 51–110; reprinted in Aufsätze, 170–217.Google Scholar

41 “Prolegomena,” 130.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 131.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 128.

46 Ibid., 137.

47 lbid.

48 Ibid. On the Calvinistic life ideal, see “Prolegomena,” 113–22.

49 See Justification 1, 90–133; Rechtfertigung 12, 105–53; and Ritschl's important but neglected address, “Festrede über Reformation in der lateinischen Kirche des Mittelalters (8 Juni 1887),” in Drei akademische Reden (Bonn, 1887) 30–46.Google Scholar

50 Justification 1, 166. Ritschl always insisted that the Reformation was licensed by the Western church's own tradition of theology and spirituality. Cf. “Luther Address,” 189: “Luther's right to reform the church is legitimated even before his Roman opponents by the fact that his interpretation of Christianity represents the logical development of Latin Catholicism's basic formula [Grundformel], which had been covered over and deprived of its saving efficacy by all the accretions of a ritualistic and political ecclesiasticism.”

51 Justification 1, 155–56.

52 Ibid., 126–33. This adherence to the ancient dogmas abetted the fragmentation of Reformation theology since these dogmas were not fully congruent with the reformers’ religious interests. The reformers could appropriate the old dogmas, indeed were required to do so in order to demonstrate their catholicity, but could not successfully assimilate them into their theology. (See “Prolegomena,” 127–28.)

53 See Justification 1, 157–59, in addition to “Ueber die beiden Principien des Protestantismus” (see n. 18). Cf. “Prolegomena,” 83–85.

54 Justification 1, 115, 133.

55 Ibid., 165–66.

56 In Rechtfertigung 1 Ritschl simply drops his earlier remarks (in Justification 1 ) about the Reformation as a “specific stage” in church history. The Reformation marks a new stage in Christian history in the particular (and limited) sense that “it set in motion a new phase of the Christian Lebensführung” (“Prolegomena,” 84). set in motion a new phase of the Christian Lebensführung” (“Prolegomena,” 84).

57 See Ritschl and Luther, 81–84.

58 “Prolegomena,” 56. In the introduction to his translation of the “Prolegomena,” Philip Hefner observes: “The great and intriguing question is why a man would devote ten years of his life to the study of a movement to which he was opposed.” He suggests that “the answer may lie in the fact that Pietism was so concerned with the Christian life, which was also Ritschl's major concern in his academic thought” (Three Essays, 52). Surprisingly, Mr. Hefner does not take note of Ritschl's express statement about Pietism's “reforming pretensions.” No doubt this is because Mr. Hefner makes the Lebensideal the key to Ritschl's entire system, whereas I regard the Reformation principle as the key, with the reformers’ life ideal figuring as but one (albeit pivotal) component of this larger construct. Mr. Hefner, in fact, takes over the Lebensideal construct from the 1880 “Prolegomena” and then reads Ritschl's entire literary corpus, beginning already with the first ed. (1850) of Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, in its light. My research has shown that the Lebensideal/Lebensführung construct first appears in Ritschl's system in 1873–74 (with the first ed. of Justification 3), and is then assimilated into das Princip der Reformation as its third component.

59 In spite of Ritschl's massive historical-theological assault on Pietism, it is not true that he “cordially detested” Pietism. Philipp Jakob Spener must be reckoned among the company of true teachers for Ritschl, since Spener rightly advanced an “ethical proof for the truth of Christianity” (Justification 3, 8) and firmly maintained Luther's principle that the individual's religious experiences (including conversion) “all point back to his baptism, and are to be explained as the consequences, or the renewal, of baptismal grace” (Justification 3, 156). Thus Spener preserved the indissoluble connection between justification-regeneration and the churchly fellowship, and hereby proved his fidelity to the Reformation heritage. Moreover, it was August Hermann Francke (and the Gotha Pietists), not Spener, who introduced the Busskampf on Lutheran soil (Justification 3, 162–64). Ritschl also carefully distinguishes between the old Halle Pietism and the modern species of Pietism, the latter newly allied with a repristinating Orthodoxy (e.g., in th e person of E. W. Hengstenberg), and owing more to Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brotherhood than to Spener and Francke (Justification 1, 513ff.).

60 These grave charges have been levelled against Ritschl by Philip Hefner, Faith and the Vitalities of History, 96ff. Mr. Hefner contends that Ritschl, for all his sensitivity to history's formative role in theology, “ultimately violates the integrity of the very historical reality that he knows himself beholden to, because he places this history at the mercy of a constructive category which distorts it,” namely, the narrow, reductionistic category of the Christian Lebensideal or Lebensführung (p. 97). I consider this harsh judgment to be totally unwarranted by the evidence. Mr. Hefner's basic error, I find, is that he simply equates the Lebensideal with Frömmigkeit or piety as such (cf. p. 100): thus he reduces Ritschl's multifaceted idea of religion to but a single component and then proceeds to accuse Ritschl of reductionism. As we have seen, religion or piety for Ritschl includes not only the believer's relationship to the world, but also and always to God and to the church. In Ritschl's works, therefore, the concept of the Lebensideal does not fill the total horizon of religion but refers strictly to the Christian Welt- und Lebensanschauung on the grounds of reconciliation with God. It is thus but one facet or component of piety, though an all-important facet for Ritschl (since only at this point do the uniqueness and epochal significance of Reformation Christianity first come to light). As I have shown in the present essay, moreover, Ritschl's historical method is sufficiently nuanced to allow for pervasive continuities in one dimension of piety (e.g., the religious regulation of the believer's self-understanding by the thought of grace alone) even while finding profound discontinuity in another dimension (e.g., the religious world understanding). Thus the reformers’ sola gratia piety stands in direct continuity with the loftiest piety of the Middle Ages, although the new Reformation life ideal marks a complete break with medieval monastic-ascetic Weltflucht. The notion of the Christian life ideal—in its biblical-Reformation guise—is actually Ritschl's category of historical discontinuity par excellence. Little wonder that Mr. Hefner, by straightway identifying “piety” with “life ideal,” concludes that Ritschl could not do justice to the pluralities and relativities of Christian history. I conclude, however, that Mr. Hefner has not done justice to Ritschl's complex, and subtly nuanced, axiology of history based on his equally complex idea of Frömmigkeit.

61 Justification 3, 181ff.

62 Instruction (paragraph 3), 22. See also Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung. Band, Zweiter: Der biblische Stoff der Lehre (Bonn, 1874, 1882, 1889 - 1900 ) section 3 (“Die Auctorität der heiligen Schrift für die Theologie”).Google Scholar

63 Leben, 2. 165.

64 Justification 3, 10.

65 Ibid. 11, 181.

66 Ibid., 6.

67 Ibid., 7.

68 Theology, 209.

69 Justification 1, 390.

70 See esp. Theology, 203–9.

71 See Ritschl and Luther, 31–51.

72 Justification 3, vii, 113, 141.

73 On Burckhardt's Luther-Reformation interpretation, and for the quotation here cited, see Ritschl and Luther, 162ff.

74 In Justification 3 Ritschl pointedly asserts that “the doctrine of justification set forth [in the first three chapters dealing with the concept and general relations of justification] stands in the line of direct continuity with the intention of the reformers and the standards of the Lutheran church” (p. 191). Comparable claims occur throughout Justification 3 (e.g., 211–12; 333–34; 391–99; 498–99; 548–49; 660).

75 This split is central to Ritschl's phenomenology of religion: it poses the dominant Heilsfrage to which every religion addresses itself. It is clear, of course, that this was not the primary soteriological issue for the sixteenth-century reformers. Here Ritschl's “critical reappropriation” of Reformation religion—his “innovation” vis-á-vis the Reformation tradition—shows itself in all clarity. Yet Ritschl was striving to respond to the pressing issues of his own day by assuming responsibility for his Reformation heritage. I take this significant hermeneutical endeavor to be a sign of his theological acuity and greatness, not a proof of his servile capitulation to the Zeitgeist.

76 See Willey, Basil, Nineteenth Century Studies (London, 1949)Google Scholar and idem, More Nineteenth Century Studies (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Heller, Erich, The Disinherited Mind: Essays in Modern German Literature and Thought (Penguin Books, 1961)Google Scholar; and esp. Lionel Trilling's brilliant last book, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA, 1972).Google Scholar

77 Mid-century developments in philosophy and the natural sciences (including the rise of “scientism”) are discussed in such informative books as Merz, John Theodore, A History of Eurpoean Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 3 (London, 1912Google Scholar; reprint ed., New York, 1965); Cassirer, Ernst, The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History Since Hegel (New Haven, 1950)Google Scholar; and Mandelbaum, Maurice, History, Man & Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought (Baltimore/London, 1971).Google Scholar

78 For Ritschl's reply to Strauss, and to contemporary pessimism, materialism, etc., see Justification 3, 206ff., 229ff., 614ff.