Werner Elert

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Werner Elert (born August 19, 1885 in Heldrungen am Kyffhäuser , † November 21, 1954 in Erlangen ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian .

Life

Elert was baptized in the Golgotha ​​Church in Heldrungen.

Elert was born in what was then the Prussian province of Saxony , in what is now Thuringia , but grew up in northern Germany. After attending today's Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium in Harburg and the Gymnasium in Husum , he studied theology , philosophy , history, German literary history, psychology and law in Breslau , Erlangen and Leipzig . In Erlangen he received his doctorate first in philosophy, then also in theology. During his time in Erlangen and Leipzig, he became a member of the Evangelical Lutheran student associations in Philadelphia in the Leuchtenburg Association (LV) .

After a short time as private tutor in the Baltic States ( Livonia ), he was pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran (Old Lutheran) Parochie Seefeld (Old Lutheran Diocese of Pomerania ) from 1912 to 1919 , to which, in addition to Seefeld, the localities Kolberg and Zuchen belonged. He experienced the First World War as a field preacher on various fronts.

In 1919 Elert became director of the Old Lutheran theological seminary in Breslau. In 1923 he was appointed to the chair for church history at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen . Since 1932 he represented systematic theology . In the academic year 1926/27 he was rector of the university, in 1928/29 and from 1935 to 1943 dean of the theological faculty.

In 1953 Elert retired. He died unexpectedly during the following year at the age of 69 as a result of an operation.

Werner Elert was married to Annemarie Froböß (* 1892), a daughter of the Breslau church council Georg Froböß .

His former home in Erlangen, Hindenburgstrasse 44, is now owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria as the “Werner-Elert-Heim” theological study center .

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Christianity and Common Thought

Elert's work falls mainly in the upheaval and new awakening of Protestant theology after the First World War, through which liberal theology got into a crisis. This consisted in the fact that after the experiences of the war and the collapse of the old order, Christianity could no longer be understood as part of general culture and education. Rather, human culture and education had to be understood as inadequate and under God's judgment, and the Christian message accordingly as a diastasis to general culture.

The book The Struggle for Christianity is determined by the basic conception that, after the theology of the 19th century sought a “synthesis” with the environment, the “diastasis” must now be made aware: “Theology not as an appendix to the general one Intellectual history, but rather as its independent counterpart and point of reference ”. Elert's interpretation of contemporary culture is strongly influenced by Oswald Spengler's book “ Der Untergang des Abendlandes . A morphology of world history ”, whose influence would later also be decisive in the“ morphology of Lutheranism ”. While looking at the history of theology in the 19th century it becomes clear that "Protestantism was brought to the brink of decline wherever it was wanted to merge into a synthesis with the non-Christian environment", this is all the more true in the decadent one Culture of the present which, according to Spengler's analysis of the "fall of the west", is already in the decline stage:

“If, after everything that world history teaches, one cannot doubt that the last day will also come for our culture, then the Christians who are then left from our midst will, like those pilgrim fathers, take nothing else with them into a new world than the Bible under the arm ”.
"Then at this moment there is only one great commandment for those who are called by Christianity to be its spokesmen: to free Christianity from the entanglements of a declining culture, so that it is not dragged down into the vortex".

The demand for a "diastasis" of Christianity to general thinking will also have an effect in Elert's later works, for example when he starts out in the "Morphology of Lutheranism" from a denominational "dynamism" of Lutheranism, "which is the structural fundamental given of the historical changes themselves is given ”, or if he works out in his dogma-historical work, contrary to Harnack's approach, among other things, the relationship of the old church dogma to the biblical image of Christ in order to show that the dogma is not an alienation of the original gospel, but a necessary timeless specification of the Belief.

On the theological approach: real dialectics of law and gospel

Characteristic of the emphatically Lutheran-denominational theology of Elert, who has been called the “Lutheranissimus” among theologians, is the (real) dialectic of “ law ” as God's judging guilty verdict on man and “ gospel ” as acquittal in Christ: "The harsh antithetics of the relationship between law and gospel, Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus, can be seen as a specific feature of Elert's theology and as the organizing center of his dogmatics and ethics". Elert's theology is thus characterized by a "basic tension". Law and gospel are not abstract doctrines or messages, but judgments of God, under which man knows himself to be placed. The tension between law and gospel has consequences for knowledge and actions of man; but it is about a "pathos" that consists in the experience of sin and the experience of grace.

The experience of the law includes the horror of man before the God, whose claims he cannot meet, and whom he experiences as destructive. Elert describes this “primal experience” in a similarly idiosyncratic way as he did the experience of the “visitation” in the Erlangen lecture cited above:

“But over all this reasonableness of the world and comprehensibility of what ought to be, man suddenly starts. Horror seizes him. Of what? Every religion may begin with a horror. But here it is not a mere feeling of worldly discomfort, the feeling of the uncanny, mysteriousness, irrationality of the environment. Not even the mere fear of one's own inadequacy, of aging and having to die. And not just the feeling of being crushed by the infinite. Rather, it is the horror that one feels when suddenly two demonic eyes stare at him in the night, which paralyze him into immobility and fill him with the certainty: they are the eyes of the one who will kill you in this hour. (...) God suddenly turned from an object of reflection, from a paragraph of dogmatics, into a person who calls me personally. "

God is indeed present in the address in the law, but as the hidden God, the “Deus absconditus”. God reveals himself in the law, but his concern is not actually to destroy the sinner, but to make him believe in the gospel:

“The original experience is not just the opposite of what he [= God] wants to achieve. It is also the means to do so. The end he wants to achieve is faith and what it receives: forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. These goods are to be received from him. That is why they need faith, and that is why man must come to the position in which the original experience finds him. "

At this point, what Elert described in the above-cited lecture to the Erlangen student community is expressed in a more abstract form: Christ comes to us in strange disguises . In the Gospel, the message of the acquittal of the sinner on the basis of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, on the other hand, God emerges from his secrecy, he is said with Luther to be the “Deus revelatus”, to reveal God to whom faith can hold. “Out of the terrible darkness of the 'hidden God', whose judgment according to the 'law' destroys me as a sinner, 'God himself' emerges as a man in the form of Jesus Christ (...), from the judgment the gospel: 'I live , and you should also live '( Joh 14,19  LUT ) -' real dialectic 'interwoven - this very narrowest and at the same time most powerful constriction of Lutheran faith, that is the empirical theological core of Elert's theology ”.

Since the judging God according to Elert is also experienced in fate, as his interpretation of the war experiences as a "visitation" shows, the belief that he does not despair in the adversities of life, but in the knowledge that here the hidden one proves itself Encounter God, keep the Gospel and appeal for the pardon of man in Christ. This forms the highest form of the dialectical experience of God ; it's about believing in God against God. In this context, Elert refers to Luther's interpretation of the story of Jacob's fight on the Jabbok in Gen 32  LUT :

That is the Christian providence. It is not cowardly surrender to what must come, but rather overcoming it. It is heroic belief. Because he is giving up the last reinsurance. He dares to conquer the one who has everything. He dares because God has all freedom, including that of allowing himself to be conquered by faith. This is how Luther understood the lonely struggle of the man who was attacked by the stranger the night before his return home. He counters the threat of the stranger by believing in the promise: “Pereundum tibi erit, the stranger exclaims, Jacob, you must serve. Ad haec Jacob [= Jacob]: No, God doesn't want that. Non peribo! [= I will not perish]. Yes and no went together very sharply and violently (...) ”.

"Morphology of Lutheranism"

Elert was not only a distinguished dogmatist, but also a fundamentally learned historical theologian, as his "Morphology of Lutheranism" shows, in which he presents a kind of cultural history of Lutheranism. In the two-volume work, which is sometimes regarded as his "most important", he works out how the spiritual core, the "dynamis" of Lutheranism, which he defines in the dialectical experience of God in law and gospel, expressed in worldview and social doctrine finds. Elert describes the dialectical experience of God as an “evangelical approach”. As a dynamis, it guarantees the unity of Lutheranism as a “morph”, ie a “shape” in the sense of a unified whole of life.

The approach and structure of the “Morphology of Lutheranism” is clearly shaped by Spengler's “The Downfall of the West”. This is represented by the use of the typical Spengler term “morphology” “as well as the distribution of the material in two volumes, plus the ostentatious special position of Lutheranism (according to Spengler's 'cultures'), the complex structure of the whole with issues such as 'space' and 'Time' as well as the unbelievable material density of the representation itself ”. The “evangelical approach” as the “dynamis” of Lutheranism corresponds to what Spengler sees as the “soul” of cultures.

Since not only Lutheranism as a cultural or church-historical phenomenon, but also Christian faith in general in the Lutheran understanding is shaped by the "evangelical approach" elaborated by Elert, the corresponding explanations in the "Morphology of Lutheranism" have not only historical, but also systematic - theological character. This shows what was mentioned early on as a characteristic of Elert's work: They move “on the borderline between historical and systematic theology” with a tendency towards the latter.

Dogma story

Elert turned not only to Lutheranism, but above all in his later years also to questions of the history of dogma in the early Church. His aim was to present the theology of the early church not in the sense of Adolf von Harnack as a Hellenization and thus alienation of the original Christianity, but as an effort to achieve an appropriate understanding of the biblical witness to Christ. This project also had not only a historical, but a current-theological concern. While Harnack's basic understanding of the history of dogma was guided, among other things, by the idea that true Christianity was undogmatic, Elert was interested in the need for generally recognized dogmas, also for the theological debate of the present. In this respect, his dogma-historical efforts can be understood as a rehabilitation of dogma out of systematic-theological necessity. That this project is in accordance with his basic approach of seeing Christianity not in synthesis, but in diastasis to general thinking, has already been said in an earlier paragraph.

So Elert was concerned with a “revision of the classic history of dogma”. His starting point was that “every participant” in the dogmatic discussions and disputes of the early Church was “under the compulsion of the word of God he had heard”; “There is no one who has not invoked it”. This gives rise to the following basic understanding of the history of dogma:

"Through all human confusion runs here, without the fellow players being able to overlook it themselves, because they do not even know the intended provisional end point, a thread of inner consistency that continuously connects all moments that have become meaningful while listening to God's word." .

Elert counters the thesis of a Hellenizing foreign infiltration of Christianity in the development of dogmas in the early church with the view that the church dogma was even directed against the influence of Greek metaphysics on theology, and that the history of dogma tends to show a tendency towards de- Hellenization:

"We rather believe that the church has just thrown a wall with its dogma against a metaphysics that is alien to it".

Elert does not deny that some dogmatists adopted Greek philosophy in the early church. Dogmatics, however, is not yet the generally recognized and recognized ecclesiastical dogma, and Elert shows that the logos speculation influenced by Greek philosophy, as found from Justin the Martyr to Origen , was not included in the dogma; the Nicaenum is roughly in line with it his talk of the Logos factually to the prologue of the Gospel of John . Especially in the postnicaenic epoch of the history of dogma, when the question of the relationship of the pre-existing Logos incarnated in Christ to God was answered dogmatically, and the discussion shifted to the question of the relationship between divine and human nature in Christ, was followed by Elert not philosophical speculation, but the image of Christ in the Gospels as the movens of the history of dogma. In this way, the later history of dogma became, even more than the earlier, an effort to understand the New Testament testimony of Christ:

"The appearance of the evangelical image of Christ in the post-Nicean dialectic signifies the beginning of the end of Greek metaphysics in theology".

Because of his unexpected death, Elert could no longer present a coherent dogma story. A number of preparatory work and fragments were published from the estate under the title “The outcome of the early church Christology”.

Relationship to National Socialism and Aryan Paragraphs

Elert's behavior in the Third Reich is highly controversial . The discussion about this as well as about the later handling of the Erlangen theological faculty with this part of its history has even reached the daily press in some cases.

In 1933 Elert and his Erlangen colleague Paul Althaus wrote the report of the Erlangen theological faculty on the Aryan paragraph in the church ("Theological report on the admission of Christians of Jewish origin to the offices of the German Evangelical Church"). In analogy to the Reich Law of April 7, 1933 "for the restoration of the German professional civil service", with which "non-Aryans" were removed from the civil service, the Erlangen report supported the demand that Christians of Jewish descent be kept out of church offices, but at the same time states that that their full membership in the DEK [= German Evangelical Church] (...) is not denied or restricted by this. This judgment results from the postulate that the holders of an ecclesiastical office should belong to the same people as the parishioners; in Germany they would have to be Germans. Whether this is true for Jews, however, is a question that the Church cannot decide, so it has to orientate itself on state legislation.

Elert also co-signed the Ansbach Council of June 11, 1934, with which the Barmen Theological Declaration was rejected. Compared to Barmen, who was shaped by the theology of revelation , the advice took the view, derived from natural theology , that in addition to revelation in Christ, God also reveals himself in the family, people and race. The manifesto was signed by leading members of the German Christians and the National Socialist Evangelical Pastors' Association and received its theological weight from the signing of Elert and Althaus.

The Ansbach advice says: “As believing Christians we [thank] God the Lord that he has given our people the leader as a 'pious and loyal shepherd' in their need and in the National Socialist state order 'good regiment', a regiment with discipline and wants to give honor ”.

According to Helmut Thielicke's memories, in 1935, on the occasion of the opening of a newly founded study center in Erlangen, the dean Elert admonished the residents not to let “be surpassed by anyone in their loyalty to the Führer”.

On the other hand: “Elert was not a National Socialist, regardless of initial sympathies; He also kept his distance from the German Christians ”. He resisted "the long-standing pressure from the Erlangen university leadership to join either the NSDAP or at least the faith movement 'German Christians' (DC) as dean of the theological faculty". He is also said to be “politically and racially incriminated theology students”, whose number he himself stated as 40–50, “among z. In some cases, they protected considerable personal risk or kept them from being accessed by the Gestapo ”.

That Elert's behavior did not result from ideological approval of National Socialism can already be seen from the report on the Aryan paragraph. If it recommends that the Jewish Christians restraint in assuming church offices, but at the same time the possibility of full membership of converted Jews in the German Evangelical Church is not denied, yes, the Jewish people even as "the people of salvation history in election and curse (...) People of Jesus and the apostles according to the flesh ”, then this certainly does not correspond to the National Socialist anti-Semitism, which sees the Jews as an inferior race.

For Elert, loyalty to the National Socialist regime and its demands resulted from a national-conservative attitude including sympathy for a strong, orderly state, which he, like many others, tried to transfer to the leadership of the Third Reich. In close connection with this, a certain conception of the Lutheran tradition comes into effect in the corresponding pronouncements, the revelation of God in law and gospel. The Ansbach advice says: “The word of God speaks to us as law and gospel. (...) The Gospel is the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and was raised for our righteousness. The law (...) meets us in the total reality of our life as it is brought into light through revelation. It binds everyone to the class to which he has been called by God, and obliges us to the natural orders to which we are subject, such as family, people, race (ie blood connection) ”.

The authors of the Ansbach advice expected the “Führer” to free the German people from their political and economic hardship. Against the background that the state and its ruler, and be it the “leader”, were regarded as God-given orders, it was considered a Christian duty to help strengthen these orders. In the concrete situation, this was understood as loyalty to the National Socialist state. Thus, after the designation of the “Führer” as a God-given “pious and good shepherd”, it says: “We therefore know that we are responsible before God to help with the work of the Führer in our profession and class”. The same applies for the opinion on the Aryan paragraph that "it binding on us [in the law on the transfer of n ] God's will [ ns ], to the natural orders" of folk and race "goes out and therefore" the duty of the German people, by To protect 'legal acts' against the threat to one's own life from emancipated Judaism ”, concludes.

Elert lost both sons in World War II. In a lecture he gave to the Erlangen student community on June 6, 1945, just four weeks after the end of the war, Elert interpreted the death of his sons and the experiences of the war as a “visitation” of God, an experience of the incomprehensible Judging God, who wants to smash man's security in order to open him up to the experience of the Gospel, the good news of being accepted by Christ. A piece from this lecture, which illustrates Elert's somewhat idiosyncratic style, should be cited here.

“Christ has announced that he will come in strange disguises ( Mt 25.40  LUT ). Many of my listeners have now learned how strange it is when he is 'looking for us at home'. He aims more and more precisely. It hits better from one time to the next. He made a careful note of the house you live in. He comes more and more often. He just seems to love it. He comes in the form of the postman: Your son has fallen. The next time he meets you in the dark on the stairs (everything had to be darkened for us all the time), throws you down and you lie in the stretch bandage for a few months with broken bones. Then again he informs you in the form of the local group leader: another son ... coincidentally the last one this time. (...) The neutral theologian will find, however, that such private matters do not belong in scientific theology. He will even think that pietism is practiced here. But on the contrary, this is about pure teaching. As long as you still have a home, you can also be haunted. But if you don't have one anymore, where is the visitation? Then it is all about orthodoxy, namely pure Christology. Haunted? In the end, should that mean that when he visits, he himself looks for a home? For themselves? Looking for an apartment is once again a purely personal matter for us today. For him too? ( Joh 14,23  LUT )? "

Appreciation

It is undisputed that Elert was a theologian of high stature due to his extensive theological, historical and cultural-historical education, for which the broad spectrum of his subjects already stands.

In this respect he was not denied the respect of theological and personal opponents. For example, Helmut Thielicke, who in his memoirs does not withhold the difficult personality of Elert and his problematic behavior as dean during the Third Reich, recommended that after the Second World War students who wanted to move to Erlangen study with Elert.

In the specialist literature, for example, Elert's morphology of Lutheranism is praised for the way in which an “almost unmistakable material is masterfully bundled”, in which his “sovereignty of scientific ability” is shown. His approach to the history of dogma is praised for the fact that he succeeds in “tracing the path of early church christology in a more differentiated manner than has been done so far”. It could therefore be regarded as continuing.

In the reception, however, Elert is presented primarily because of his theological approach as an opponent of Karl Barth and the direction of dialectical theology that originates from him . In terms of the history of theology, Elert is initially in the same place as Barth, whose independent theological work also belongs to the epoch of crisis and a new beginning after the First World War.

Elert's approach to the "primal experience" of not being able to exist before God, quoted above, can be interpreted as an opposing position to Friedrich Schleiermacher's romantic-idealistic approach , according to which religion does not begin with the horror of God, but as a "sense and taste for the infinite" or the like. Elert shares this opposite position "with his entire theological generation (...), especially with his most radical antipode Karl Barth".

Certain differences to Barth existed from the beginning: On the one hand, the early Barth understood the diastasis between Christianity and general culture in principle, while Elert saw it as the imperative of the hour, but not a fundamental, always valid relationship determination, on the other hand, Elert, in contrast to Barth, should experienced the upheaval less strongly because it did not go through the school of liberal theology, but rather is part of the Erlangen tradition referred to by the names of Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank and Ludwig Ihmels .

Elert did not deal with the "dialectical theology" originating from Barth only from the thirties, from the time of the church struggle, and exclusively critically. The center of the theological contradiction lies in the fact that Elert starts from two words of God, law and gospel, while Barth sees in the gospel of Jesus Christ the one valid word of God to which the law is arranged. Elert's participation in the Ansbach advice, which was directed against the Barmer Theological Declaration, is due to precisely this contradiction: the orders of creation, such as those of people and state, must not simply be leveled as a divine setting by - as the Barmer Declaration largely formulated by Barth states - only accepts Jesus Christ as the proclamation of God. Barth gave expression to the irreversible primacy of the revelation of Christ in, among other things, Gospel and Law (instead of Law and Gospel), first published in 1935 .

Based on the dispute over the Barmer Declaration and, however, a problem with the Elertian approach becomes apparent: the acceptance of the non-evangelical positions of God contributed to the initial approval of the National Socialist regime. The Ansbach advice expressly refers to the fact that the law as a revelation of God is encountered alongside the gospel "in the total reality of our life" and deduces from this the loyalty to the "leader". On the other hand, Barth was able to counter the claims of the new regime that they were solely related to Christ. Against the historical background, the controversy about the revelation in law and gospel as two words (Elert) or gospel and law as one word of God (Barth) thus concerned highly topical issues.

On the other hand, Elert's approach, in addition to the revelation of Christ, to describe the differentiated experience of God in the law and to classify this every experience of fate, can be understood as a strength compared to Barth's approach: Because Elert, like Luther, assumes “that God is in nature and history, including mine personal history, when 'Deus absconditus' (...) is consistently personally present ”he brings back into theology the entire complex of 'theologically non-integrable' which Karl Barth left to the atheistic no man's land”.

Again, however, it can be perceived as a problem if one interprets every experience of fate as an experience of the hidden God who wants to prepare people for the acceptance of the gospel. But it would be a mistake to see an objective solution to the theodicy question in this, since Elert's theology is less abstract and systematic than conceived from the perspective of personal experience of God. It is theology of experience, "in all sobriety" it was called "a theology suffered". Elert does not hold it as a doctrine, but as a certainty of the Christian faith:

“Whoever believes in God knows that he will meet him everywhere, in every place, in every event. We really have every reason (...) to keep in mind not only others but also ourselves that there is no event in which he does not meet us ”.

This strong understanding of God's omnipresence is not only comprehensible "on paper", "but in such a way that we have to live with this presence as real as Elert himself lived in it". In the contradictions of a life led in the certainty of the omnipresence of God, which, contrary to general experience, is determined by faith in the gospel, the danger of a dualistic, Marcionite tearing of the image of God is avoided, on which the tension between law and gospel in an abstract one is avoided Contemplation could result.

Finally, another problem with Elert's approach is to be seen in the fact that outside of the gospel it only addresses the experience of God in the law. Positive non-evangelical experiences of creation and preservation do not come into view.

Fonts

A detailed bibliography can be found in:

  • Friedrich Hübner (among others) (Ed.): Commemorative publication for D. Werner Elert. Contributions to historical and systematic theology ; Berlin 1955 (with bibliography)

Monographs

  • Rudolf Rocholl's Philosophy of History ; Erlangen 1910.
  • Dogma, ethos, pathos. Three kinds of Christianity ; Leipzig 1920
  • The struggle for Christianity. History of the relationship between Protestant Christianity in Germany and general thought since Schleiermacher and Hegel ; Munich 1921; Reprint Hildesheim 2005
  • Morphology of Lutheranism ;
    • Vol. 1: Theology and Weltanschauung of Lutheranism mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries ; Munich 1931 (1965 3 )
    • Vol. 2: Social teaching a. Social effects of Lutheranism ; Munich 1932 (1965 3 )
  • The Christian faith. Basic lines of Lutheran dogmatics ; Berlin 1940 (Erlangen 1988 6 , edited and edited by Ernst Kinder )
  • The Christian ethos. Basic lines of Lutheran ethics ; Tübingen 1949 (Erlangen 1961 2 edited and edited by Ernst Kinder)
  • Lord's Supper and Communion in the Old Church mainly of the East ; Berlin 1954
  • The outcome of the early church Christology. An investigation into Theodor von Pharan and his time as an introduction to the ancient history of dogma ; from the estate ed. v. Wilhelm Maurer and Elisabeth Bergsträßer. Berlin 1957

Essays

  • Between grace and injustice. Modifications of the law and gospel theme ; Munich 1948
  • A teacher of the Church. Church-theological essays and lectures by Werner Elert ; ed. by Max Keller-Hüschemenger; Berlin 1967

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ As a source on youth and student days cf. Elert's entry in the Golden Book of the University of Erlangen on January 5, 1927, published in: Thomas Kaufmann: Werner Elert als Kirchenhistoriker . In: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (ZThK) 93 (1996), pp. 236–238.
  2. ↑ Beyschlag: Erlanger Theologie , p. 154
  3. ↑ See also Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), pp. 207ff.
  4. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 3
  5. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 490
  6. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 489
  7. ↑ Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), p. 216.
  8. ↑ This distinguished confessional position is exemplified by the fact that his dogmatics bears the title “The Christian Faith”, which is specified by the subtitle “Basic lines of Lutheran dogmatics”.
  9. ↑ After Walther von Loewenich : Experienced Theology. Encounters, experiences, considerations . Munich 1979, p. 118 this designation comes from “a contemporary theologian” (without naming).
  10. ↑ On the theological-historical background of the juxtaposition of law and gospel cf. Christoph Schwöbel : Law and Gospel . In: Religion in Past and Present , 4th Edition, Vol. 3, Col. 862–867.
  11. ↑ Kaufmann: In: RGG 4 2, Sp. 1198.
  12. ^ Oswald Bayer, in: Handbuch Systematischer Theologie I, p. 306
  13. ^ Oswald Bayer, in: Handbuch Systematischer Theologie I, 306.
  14. ↑ Elert: Morphology of Lutheranism I, verb. Reprint of the 1st edition, Munich 1958, p. 18
  15. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 63.
  16. ↑ Elert: Kampf um den Christianentum , p. 64: “Christ is the content of that revelation with which faith has to do with faith. In him God emerges from his secrecy ”.
  17. ↑ Beyschlag: Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 34. Beyschlag refers to colleague experience with Elert and to Elert's essay Law and Gospel , in: Elert: Between Gnade and Ungnade, p. 132ff.
  18. ↑ Elert: Der christliche Glaube , 6th edition, p. 287; he quotes from Luther's Genesis Lecture, Weimar Edition 44, p. 100
  19. ↑ So Kaufmann, RGG 4 2, Sp. 1198; Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie , p. 119 calls it Elert's "main work". For the presentation and appreciation of the work cf. Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), p. 215ff.
  20. ↑ For an overview of this work and its classification in the theological discussion cf. also Peters, TRE 9, p. 494f.
  21. ↑ Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums I, p. 3: If Lutheranism is to be "a morphology , a unified whole of life", a dominant determining all expressions of life must be discernible; on the evangelical approach as the creative dynamis of Lutheranism cf. Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums I, 8, where he first introduces this as a working hypothesis.
  22. ^ Beyschlag, Erlanger Theologie , p. 159
  23. ↑ Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), p. 218
  24. ^ Elert, Morphology I, first section.
  25. ↑ For example, in a letter from the dean of the theological faculty in Erlangen (Prof. Bachmann) dated October 20, 1922, in which he justified the wish of Elert to be appointed to the university senate; quoted in Thomas Kaufmann, Werner Elert als church historian , in: ZThK 93 (1996), 238
  26. ↑ On the criticism of Harnack cf. Elert: The Church and its history of dogma . In: ders .: The outcome of the early church Christology , pp. 313–333, especially pp. 314 f .; on Elert's approach to dogma history in general, cf. Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach : Gospel and Dogma. Coping with the theological problem of the history of dogma in Protestantism . Stuttgart 1959, p. 242 ff.
  27. ^ So Peters, in: TRE 9, p. 496; see. also Beyschlag, Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 49 f.
  28. ↑ Elert: The Church and Her Dogma History , p. 325
  29. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 325
  30. ↑ Elert: Christ image and Christ dogma . In: ders., Outcome of the Early Church Christology, pp. 12-25 (p. 14)
  31. ↑ Elert: Battle for Christianity , p. 22
  32. ↑ See the article by Stefan Schosch: Collegial consideration suppressed the question of the hereditary burden . The Erlangen church historian Berndt Hamm gives reason to examine the work of the theologian Werner Elert in the Frankfurter Rundschau of November 7, 1991, p. 18. On Hamm's extremely critical account of Elert, cf. Berndt Hamm: Werner Elert as a war theologian . In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 11/2 (1998), pp. 206-254 passim. Karlmann Beyschlag adds an excursus on the subject of “The Erlangen Faculty and the Church Struggle” in his presentation of the Erlangen theologians, in which he tries to get a differentiated picture of the decisions Elert supported during the Third Reich; see. ders .: The Erlanger Theologie , pp. 160–170. On the subject also Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), pp. 240–242 (Appendix III: On Elert's attitude to National Socialism ).
  33. ↑ Published in Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: The Confessions and Basic Statements on the Church Question of 1933 . Göttingen 1934, pp. 182-186
  34. ↑ Quoted from: Schmidt, Confessions of the Year 1933, p. 185
  35. ↑ For the presentation and critical interpretation of the Erlangen report cf. Walther von Loewenich: Experienced theology. Encounters, experiences, considerations . Munich 1979, pp. 177-180; also Beyschlag: Erlanger Theologie , pp. 162–165
  36. ↑ Published in Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: The Confessions and Basic Statements on the Church Question . Volume 2: The year 1934, Göttingen 1935, pp. 102-104; for the history, development and critical interpretation of the “Ansbach advice” cf. Walther von Loewenich: Experienced theology. Encounters, experiences, considerations . Munich 1979, pp. 174-177; Beyschlag: Erlanger Theologie , pp. 165–170
  37. ^ Clemens Vollnhals: Evangelical Church and Denazification 1945–1949 (= Studies on Contemporary History, Vol. 36). Munich: Oldenbourg-Verlag 1989. ISBN 3-486-54941-3 (originally Diss. Univ. Munich 1986), p. 128
  38. ↑ Quoted from: Schmidt, Confessions . Volume 2, p. 103.
  39. ↑ Helmut Thielicke: Guest on a beautiful star , paperback edition 1987, p. 124
  40. ↑ Thomas Kaufmann, Art. Elert , in: RGG 4 2, Sp. 1198
  41. ^ Beyschlag: Erlanger Theologie , p. 161. On Elerts' relationship to the NSDAP and German Christians, cf. also Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), p. 241.
  42. ↑ Beyschlag, ibid. Beyschlag refers to the report written by Elert about his time as dean from 1935–1943, which he cites in full in Erlanger Theologie , pp. 268–286. At this point, the passage on “Supervising students” (pp. 279–281) is relevant.
  43. ↑ Quoted from Schmidt, The Confessions and Fundamental Statements on the Church Question of 1933 , pp. 184f
  44. ↑ In order to illustrate a corresponding coinage by Elert, reference should be made to his remark in the entry in the Golden Book of the University of Erlangen: "The pride of my boyhood was that the kings of Prussia did not wage a war in which Elert did not fight", quote after Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), p. 236. Also Walther von Loewenich: Erlebte Theologie. Encounters, experiences, considerations . München 1979, 118 quotes this statement as part of a characterization of Elert.
  45. ↑ Quoted from Schmidt: Confessions , Vol. 2, p. 103
  46. ↑ Quoted from: Schmidt, ibid.
  47. ↑ Albrecht Peters, Art. Elert , in: TRE 9, p. 496
  48. ↑ Werner Elert: Philology of Visitation . In: id .: Between grace and injustice , pp. 9–16 (pp. 15f.); on the historical background of this lecture cf. Albrecht Peters: Under the Visitation of God - on Werner Elert's theological legacy . In: Kerygma and Dogma 31 (1985), pp. 250-292.
  49. ↑ Cf. Thielicke, Guest on a beautiful star , 101 ff; 109 f and above note 2. According to Peters: Under the Visitation of God , p. 255 Thielicke's judgment on Elert should be “hasty and bad”, even if “perhaps personally understandable”. Instead, he refers to "the respectful sketches by Walther von Löwenich and Wolfgang Trillhaas"
  50. ^ Personal memory of Jörg Baur , communicated in Göttingen on December 15, 2006
  51. ↑ Peters, in: TRE 9, p. 495
  52. ^ Beyschlag: Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 44
  53. ^ Kantzenbach: Evangelium und Dogma , p. 246.
  54. ↑ So also Notger Slenczka: Self-Constitution , p. 15.
  55. ↑ Cf. inter alia Bayer, Handbuch Systematischer Theologie I, p. 283: Like Barth or Paul Tillich , Elert belonged to the generation of theologians who responded to the “experience of the First World War” with a “theology of crisis”.
  56. ↑ On this interpretation cf. Addendum: Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 33f. (Quote from Erlanger Theology , 34)
  57. ↑ So also Kaufmann, ZThK 93 (1996), pp. 208f.
  58. ↑ On Elert's special position in connection with the theological new dawn of the twenties, cf. Slenczka, Self-Constitution , pp. 15ff. Slenczka's program is to understand Elert's theology not from contemporary discussions, but from his own roots in the Erlangen tradition.
  59. ↑ On this discussion cf. also Schwöbel: Law and Gospel . In: Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart , 4th edition, Vol. 3, Sp. 862–867, Sp. 864f.
  60. ↑ Beyschlag: Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 40
  61. ↑ So Wolfgang Trillhaas in the preface to the 6th edition of Elert, Der christliche Glaube.
  62. ↑ Elert: The Christian Faith , p. 146f
  63. ↑ Beyschlag: Werner Elert in memoriam , p. 41
  64. ↑ See Beyschlag, ibid.
  65. ↑ See Bayer, Handbuch Systematischer Theologie I, 308
personal data
SURNAME Elert, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Heroics
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1954
Place of death gain