Positive (church direction)

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Positive , the positive , the church-positive direction, etc. ä were collective terms in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries for those forces in German regional church Protestantism who opposed theological and church-political liberalism .

background

The background was the historical-critical method in biblical exegesis , which had begun since the Enlightenment ( Hermann Samuel Reimarus ) to question the factuality of the biblical miracle narratives , in particular the virgin birth , descent into hell , resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ . At the same time, the principle of writing and the early church confessions as the basis of the church unity and organization of Protestantism were cast into doubt.

While some theologians reacted to these questions with more or less open disclosure of parts of the traditional statements of faith, which were publicly perceived especially in the apostolic dispute  - the spectrum ranged from theological liberalism to new forms of deism and pantheism  - the reflection was already over for the positives the object content of the biblical-dogmatic statements is a destructive concession to unbelief .

The theological debate combined and overlapped with questions of ecclesiastical politics about the social position and organization of the Protestant churches in the empire , the sovereign church regime and the social question . The positives were mostly conservative .

The positive ecclesiastical direction was just as little as liberalism a closed bloc. There were numerous transition and mediation positions. Anti-modernism corresponded to it in the Roman Catholic Church .

Press and organizations

The Kreuzzeitung was an important journalistic forum . The Evangelical Church Newspaper and the New Evangelical Church Newspaper were also influential .

One of the most important organizations of the positives was the Positive Union, which had largely dominated the Evangelical Church in Prussia since its foundation in 1876, with its monthly journal of the same name (1904–1935). There were also u. a. the Positive Church Association in Baden (for the Evangelical Church in Baden , founded in 1850), the Positive Church Association in the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Positive Church Association for Hesse (for the Evangelical Church in Hesse ) and the Positive Association of the Palatinate ( for the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate , founded in 1909).

development

In 1914 August Wilhelm Hunzinger wrote about the relationship between the “positive church” and critical science:

“Because perhaps the most significant moment of this latest development lies in the fact that the present“ positive ”,“ ecclesiastical ”theology, the daughter of New Orthodoxy , at least in its most influential and fruitful directions and representatives, is gradually becoming more resolute and free to accept universal science In the course of time, without giving up the religious values ​​and realities of the Old Belief in the least with the theology of Old Belief. A completely new combination has emerged in this way in theological life of the present, the connection: “modern-scientific” with “positive-ecclesiastical”. The question of whether this combination is feasible, future-oriented or internally unstable and only a transition stage to radicalism is one of the most decisive questions of the present and future of the Evangelical Church. "

- Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II., Volume 2, p. 994

Literary design

In her pastor's novel Lennacker (1938), Ina Seidel portrays in the chapter The Eleventh Night and of Twelve the eleventh man: Johann Friedrich Lennacker (1836–1911) an outstanding theological and social representative of the positive. His conflict with his son, who tends towards religious socialism , is one of the reasons for the breakup of the family pastors.

literature