Liberal theology

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Liberal theology , also theological liberalism , is a term used by Protestant theologians since the middle of the 19th century for a scientific-theological or religious-philosophical development of Central European Christianity of high inhomogeneity . It reached its peak in the last third of the 19th century. In Protestant theology she found school-like training through Albrecht Ritschl . In Catholicism, the term Reform Catholicism is used as a collective term for a similarly inhomogeneous collection of authors from the last third of the 19th century .

Conception

Liberal theology according to A. Ritschl initially describes the attempt to preserve human spiritual strength in the face of a nature that is oppressive to it. More generally, liberal theologians address modern theological problems on the basis of humanistic and humanistic theories and methods. In particular, the relationship between theology and the natural sciences, but also the humanities, is being redefined by authors like Ernst Troeltsch as a problem in the light of so-called secularization . By emphasizing the inner dimension of Christianity, such a theology becomes more independent of dogmas , church traditions and formal beliefs . The secularization of originally religious content and the dissolution of the “church” into the culture of the “world” is described and welcomed by many liberal theologians as conforming to Jesus. Wilhelm Gräb defines liberal theology as a form of faith in which everyone has the freedom to express their faith and what consequences they draw from it in their daily life.

The term liberal theology goes back to Johann Salomo Semler's Institutio ad doctrinam Christianam liberaliter discendam and was already in use in the middle of the 19th century. The Catholicism has to the 1950s, opposed liberal tendencies fierce resistance. In a weakened form, however, a current of Catholic theology has undertaken a liberal-theological interpretation of the results of Vatican II , which, however, found no support in the papacy ( Credo des Gottesvolkes , 1968). Within Protestantism , the followers of liberal theology are mainly to be found in western European regional churches and in mainline churches .

Liberal theological historians refer to Friedrich Schleiermacher and Johann Gottlieb Fichte as masterminds of their theological positions.

Essential research areas of liberal theology are exegesis ( literary criticism , historical-critical exegesis ) and church history , especially the historical research into the life of Jesus, whereby Jesus was seen less in the sense of traditional church Christology as the God-man Christ and world judge, who with his death on the cross the Atoned for the sins of the world, but rather as "teachers of the kingdom of God, morality and religiosity". The various attempts by liberal theologians of the 19th century to reconstruct the real "historical Jesus" on the basis of the gospels with the help of philological, text-critical and historical methods, however, produced very inconsistent results, as the liberal theologian Albert Schweitzer in his famous post-doctoral thesis on the Life Jesus Research established. However, the common basis of today's liberal theology remains that Jesus naturally did not found a church.

criticism

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
A differentiated and inhomogeneous "movement" like liberal theology is not only difficult to define in terms of definition, but also critical. Indeed, a synthesis of liberal theological positions would first be necessary for a synthetic criticism. However, this is not available in the literature. - Anthology ( discussion ) 16:13, Jun. 27, 2018 (CEST)

Liberal theologians often refer to the findings of the Enlightenment. Thus, among other things, the quote from Immanuel Kant is assigned an axiomatic function: "Enlightenment is the exit of a person from his self-inflicted immaturity" . Critics, however, argue that the Gospels formulate an entirely different concept of guilt and redemption. According to critics, belief in the liberal understanding is only interpreted as a means of self-perfection. But every theistic concept of religion rests in contrast to the belief that there is God entitled, obedience to demand. The concept of "obedience" is, however, already controversial within the traditional Christian denominations. For example, traditional Lutheranism shows the believer's “good works” as unreflected fruits of true faith, which without conscious will in the sense of targeted “obedience” come about by themselves with true faith in the Christian creed, while the idea of ​​consciously reflective obedience in the sense of targeted fulfillment of the law, it is more of a religious variant of Calvinist and free church groups that are influenced by pietism of the 17th and 18th centuries. The majority of liberal theologians, however, do not deny the "setting of good fruit" with right faith.

The greatest Protestant critic of theological liberalism in the 20th century was Karl Barth . In the 19th century, the English convert John Henry Newman and the German Lutheran Wilhelm Löhe should be mentioned as further opponents. What they have in common is the conviction that there is no Christianity without a visibly sacramental church and no church without a unifying creed. The renouncement is just enthusiasm . However, this reproach is not devoid of polemics, since it indirectly assumes that the majority of liberal theologians represent a doctrine that allegedly refers to the Christian creed ( Nicano-Constantinople ) as well as to liturgical sacraments (e.g. baptism and the Lord's Supper) in whole or at least partly want to do without. But this is by no means the case with most of the liberal theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Well-known representatives of liberal theology

Critic of Liberal Theology

See also

literature

  • Ulrich Neuenschwander : The new liberal theology. A location assessment , Bern: Stämpfli, 1953.
  • Hans-Joachim Birkner : “Liberal Theology” , in: Churches and Liberalism in the 19th Century . Edited by Martin Schmidt and Georg Schwaiger, Göttingen 1976, pp. 33–42.
  • Liberal theology. A location determination. Edited by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Troeltsch Studies 7). Gütersloh publishing house Mohn, Gütersloh 1993.
  • Hartmut Ruddies : Karl Barth and Liberal Theology. Case studies on a theological change of epoch. Univ. Göttingen, Diss. Theol. 1994.
  • Matthias Wolfes : Protestant Theology and Modern World. Studies on the history of liberal theology after 1918. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999.
  • Mark D. Chapman: Ernst Troeltsch and liberal theology. Religion and cultural synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 2001.
  • Jörg Lauster: Liberal Theology. An encouragement. Berlin 2007.

Single receipts

  1. ^ Matthias Wolfes :  Liberal Theologie I. II. Church history . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 5, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, Sp. 311-312.
  2. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Graf :  Liberale Theologie I. On the term, general . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 5, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, Sp. 310-311.
  3. ↑ Falk Wagner : What is religion ?: Studies on its concept and topic in the past and present . G. Mohn, Gütersloh 1986, ISBN 3-579-00267-8 , pp. 107 ff .
  4. ↑ Jörg Dierken : Self-confidence of individual freedom: religious-theoretical explorations from a Protestant perspective . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-16-148810-5 , p. 135-137, 148-152 .
  5. ↑ Der Religionsphilosophische Salon, December 11, 2011: The “liberal theology” is current. Perspectives from Wilhelm Gräb
  6. ↑ Manfred Jacobs:  Liberal Theology . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 21, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991, ISBN 3-11-012952-3 , pp. 47-68.