Mediation Theology

The mediating theology was an influential current within the German theology of the 19th century. Their competitors for power and influence on faculties and pulpits were the " liberal " and the "positive" theologians.

The basics: Hegel and Schleiermacher

The term “ mediation ” became more attractive thanks to the philosopher - and trained theologian - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Since the historical reality is characterized by contradictions, every contradiction must be "canceled" in a subsequent stage. In his “ Phenomenology of Spirit ” (1807), Hegel sets up a series of levels of consciousness: self-consciousness, reason, spirit, religion, absolute knowledge. Hegel calls the rise of consciousness “experience”: In its experience, consciousness encounters itself in every other person. Every encounter becomes a new self-experience, which in turn changes consciousness. Of course, it only recognizes in the other what it perceives in itself, and is therefore part of the process of knowledge. Since the consciousness changes through this process of knowledge, it must also revise the impression of its counterpart: the counterpart appears changed and has to be mediated anew. At the highest level of knowledge, with “absolute knowledge”, there is perfect mediation: Consciousness and object agree.

The Berlin theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher also used - independently of Hegel, whose views he z. B. contradicted this concept in his own dialectic lectures (1818). Already in the speeches “About religion” to the “educated among their despisers” (1799) it says: “That is why the deity sends some here and there at all times ... equips them with wonderful gifts, paves their way through an omnipotent word , and employs them as interpreters of their will and their works, and as mediators of that which would otherwise have remained forever divorced. ”Such a mediator strives to“ awaken the sleeping germ of better humanity, to kindle the love of the highest, the common To transform life into something higher. ”Here, too, the success of people in their search for the truth is seen as dependent on a historical process. Emanuel Hirsch judges these two minds, who appear as opponents in their personal relationship, as "the two great mediators of the idealistic-romantic legacy of German spiritual science."

Reconciliation of faith and knowledge

From mostly non-direct students of both thinkers a new direction emerged, which wants to reconcile knowledge and belief and tries to escape the disputes that had previously divided Protestant theology ( rationalism / supernaturalism ). This is usually difficult because the communication of the biblical story with critical philosophy leads to distortions for many representatives that damage the philosophical consistency: Thus the preliminary decision that the divine truth will be revealed in Scripture evades critical examination. The name "Mediation Theology" comes from the program of the magazine "Theologische Studien und Nahrungsmittel", which was published in Heidelberg from 1828. The organ was given the task of “real mediation” between modern scientific consciousness and the idea of Christianity. In the area of church leadership, the mediation theology of re-Catholicization put an end to and prevented the revival of an intra-Protestant dogma-provincialism, as it largely adhered to the " Union " of Reformed and Lutheran Protestants in church politics .

Despite the attempts, the program of the biblical theology of the Reformation churches, which are committed to Luther's " sola scriptura ", and the historical-critical sciences, which arise both from the historical knowledge of the 19th century and from the philosophical-theological concepts of Schleiermacher and Hegel's dine, reconciliation with one another, the mediation theological drafts have also found critics.

literature

Emanuel Hirsch : History of modern Protestant theology , V. 3rd edition, 1964.
Friedrich Schleiermacher : About religion, speeches ... , 1st edition, 1799.
Erdmann Schott : Mediation Theology . In: RGG , 3rd ed., Vol. VI, 1958, Col. 1362-1364.
W. Wieland: Hegel . In: RGG, 3rd edition 1958.