Wilhelm Pauck

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Wilhelm Pauck (born January 31, 1901 in Laasphe ; † September 3, 1981 in Palo Alto ) was a German-American Protestant church historian .

Life

Pauck studied from 1920 to 1924 at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen . There he became active in 1921 in Berlin and in 1922 in Göttingen Wingolf . He studied with Ernst Troeltsch , Karl Holl and Adolf von Harnack . After the graduation to the licentiate in 1925 he spent on the recommendation of Holl one academic year at Chicago Theological Seminary . Following this, the Chicago Divinity School invited him to succeed the church historian Henry H. Walker . The seminar was attached to the University of Chicago , whose professor Pauck was to become for 27 years, interrupted only by an exchange year at the University of Frankfurt am Main 1948-49. In 1928 he was in the Hyde Park Congregational Church ordained . His appointment to the Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1953 brought him into close contact with a group to which u. a. also belonged to Roland Bainton , H. Richard Niebuhr and Reinhold Niebuhr . In 1959 Pauck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . After retiring in 1967, he taught at Vanderbilt University Divinity School until 1972 .

Work and meaning

Pauck was disappointed with the lack of interest shown by American liberal theologians in Karl Barth . In 1931 he published the work, Karl Barth, Prophet of a New Christianity, with the aim of defending Barth's criticism of liberal theology . However, while he supported Barth's criticism of liberal theology, he rubbed against his lack of understanding of historical-critical biblical research and was unable to share his theology of revelation . Barth was angry about this and insinuated that he was a follower of Paul Tillich's theology .

Pauck had met Tillich, who like him was a member of the Berlin Wingolf, already in 1921 in Berlin. When Tillich came to America in 1933, they became friends. For many years Pauck was Tillich's companion and his "guide through America". Unlike Tillich, he had little difficulty in getting used to the American world. Finally, Pauck wrote a biography about Tillich with his second wife Marion.

Though less known than Paul Tillich, he was an eminent American theologian. His theology has been described as an attempt to mediate between the ideas of the Reformation and the ideas of Harnack, Schleiermacher and Tillich.

Fonts

  • The kingdom of God on earth. Utopia and reality. An investigation into Butzer's “De regno Christi” and the English state church of the 16th century . Berlin 1928
  • Karl Barth. Prophet of a New Christianity? Harper, New York 1931.
  • The Heritage of the Reformation . Oxford 1961.
  • Luther: Lectures on Romans . London 1961 [The Library of Christian Classics XV].
  • Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians . Oxford 1968.
  • Paul Tillich. His life and thinking . Volume 1: His Life . Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-7715-0177-6 .

literature

  • Jaroslav Pelikan : Interpreters of Luther. Essays in honor of Wilhelm Pauck . Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1968
  • Marion Pauck: Wilhelm Pauck: Church Historian and Historical Theologian 1901–1981 Precis of a Memoir. Journal for the History of Modern Theology 6 (1). Berlin, 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members of the Göttingen Wingolf. Year 2007. p. 46.
  2. ↑ Reinhold Niebuhr according to Marion and Wilhelm Pauck in Paul Tillich, His life and thinking , Volume 1: His life, Stuttgart 1978
personal data
SURNAME Pauck, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American Protestant church historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Laasphe
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 1981
Place of death Palo Alto