Ernst Ferdinand Ströter

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Ernst Ferdinand Ströter (born May 31, 1846 in Barmen ; † August 29, 1922 in Zurich ) was a German Methodist theologian .

Life

From 1865 to 1868 Ströter studied theology, particularly influenced by the pietistic theologian Johann Tobias Beck . He then went on to be a tutor to an American family traveling across Europe. Through this connection he met the Methodist preacher W. Schwarz, through whom he came to believe .

In 1869 Ströter moved to the USA and joined a Methodist church. From 1870 he was assistant preacher in Philadelphia . In 1871 he married Caroline Doelfeld and then worked as a pioneer preacher in Texas for eight years .

Apart from personal contacts, Ströter got to know, among other things, through the work The Lord Comes by William Eugene Blackstone (1841-1935) the dispensationalism as coined by John Nelson Darby .

In 1879 he was called to serve as a preacher in the large and influential Methodist Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota .

Soon after, he was Professor of Historical and Practical Theology at Central Wesleyan College in Warrenton, Missouri . After another six years, he moved to the University of Denver , Colorado . In 1894 he joined the missionary service among the people of Israel with the Jewish missionary Arno Clemens Gaebelein (1861–1945). He has also been a speaker at many conferences in Western Europe, Poland and Russia.

1899 returned Ströter to Wernigerode am Harz back (from 1912 Zurich , Switzerland ) and made the point of view of Allaussöhnung dispensational character known in Germany, including through establishment of the journal The prophetic word 1907. The after his death by the Methodist Superintendent Henry skull discontinued magazine had to be discontinued for political reasons in 1937 and despite the efforts of Bishop Nuelsen , as the Bible was interpreted in such a way that Israel would play a leading role in the millennium . Later the magazine was continued by Karl Geyer and Adolf Heller under the name Gnade und Herrlichkeit ; it is still published today.

From 1898 Ströter took part in eight Blankenburg conferences ( Evangelical Alliance ) as a popular speaker, sometimes as the main speaker. Due to differences in questions of the understanding of the community and its representation of baptism, Ströter was excluded in 1908. On both subjects, the dispensational premillenarian view and the consequences were the point of contention. With the rejection of Ströter's understanding of the community, the German community movement clung to a theologically and fundamentally ecclesiastical Protestantism.

Mainly through his own studies, Ströter came to the conclusion, after a lengthy process and internal struggles, that the all-inclusive reconciliation was biblical. The first signs of this can be seen from 1902. Influences from outside are not clearly recognizable; neither Darby nor Beck took this view. However, a letter contact with Adolph Ernst Knoch , the editor of the New Testament Concordant, was essential for further development . In 1909, Knoch asked him to comment on his own text on this subject. Ströter wrote back to him: "It (that scripture) gave me great pleasure, because it opened up new treasuries for the revealed truth that I had only vaguely suspected and suspected". He used the Concordant New Testament and kept in touch with Knoch by letter until the end of his life. Obviously, the contact with Knoch was an impulse to publicly represent universal reconciliation from 1909 onwards. As a result, there was fierce controversy in the community movement. In 1915 his main work, The Gospel of Reconciliation in Christ , was published, a revision of previously known, exclusively biblical arguments. It becomes clear that Ströter considered the doctrine of all-atonement to be the only theological way of thinking to harmonize the statements of Scripture and the essential properties of God.

However, he did not lose contact with German Methodism. During the First World War , he collected for this movement as much as possible, especially in the USA. He remained a popular speaker with an audience of up to 1,200 until his death.

Fonts (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hirschfeld: Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , p. 470.
  2. ↑ Hirschfeld: Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , p. 540.
  3. ^ Hirschfeld: Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , p. 609.
  4. ^ Hirschfeld: Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , p. 581.
  5. ^ Hirschfeld: Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , p. 663.
personal data
SURNAME Ströter, Ernst Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, author of theological writings and missionary
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1922
Place of death Zurich