Theopedia

Albrecht Ritschl

Overview

Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) was a German Protestant theologian who, following Kant, framed the content of the Christian faith in “strictly moral-ethical terms.”1 His theology represented, in Herman Bavinck’s assessment, the “high point” of nineteenth-century “cultural Protestantism (theological liberalism)”: Christianity as an ethical religion built on redemption and the kingdom of God rather than on metaphysics or church doctrine, with successors including Herrmann, Kaftan, and Harnack.23

Theological Contribution

Ritschl separated theology from metaphysics and rebuilt it on value judgments. Resisting the Hegelian fusion of theology and philosophy, Ritschl belonged to a “return to Kant” movement that held theology could no longer speak of God as he is in himself, only of God’s worth for human moral life: “Theology, according to Ritschl, is thus about value judgments; the kingdom of God is a moral community.”4 He described Christianity itself as “an ethical religion, an ellipse with two foci: redemption and the kingdom of God, the absolutely spiritual and the absolutely moral religion.”2 This rested on a phenomenalist theory of knowledge in which, as Bavinck summarized it, “a thing completely coincides with and is exhaustively present in its appearance,” leaving no metaphysical substance behind what can be experienced.2

His doctrine of God started from the moral structure of the family rather than from God’s being. As theology turned away from metaphysics, Ritschl “looked to the moral structure of the family as the norm for our thinking about God,” concluding that God “must be seen not as Lord or King or Master but as Father,” and that God “is not Absolute Being but Love.”5 For Ritschl, Christian theology had to proceed from the single concept of love and derive creation, providence, reconciliation, and justification from it alone.5

His Christology centered on Jesus’s historical obedience rather than his divine judgment. Where Schleiermacher had located Christ’s work in a mystical reconciliation, Ritschl “made of Christ the perfect man who brings the moral kingdom of God to humanity,” refocusing attention “on the historical Jesus and his perfect obedience and vocational faithfulness to the point of death but rejected all notions of divine judgment and wrath in favor of a God understood only as love.”3 In this scheme, Christ’s death becomes a pedagogical example rather than a substitutionary payment for sin, and Jesus himself “is not the constituent content of the gospel; he is only a guide to the Father.”3 Faith, for Ritschl, “consists especially in working for the kingdom of God and essentially coincides with love.”6

On justification, Ritschl recentered the doctrine on the community while denying God’s wrath against sin. He treated justification as a “synthetic judgment … valid for the community,” pronounced prior to, not on the basis of, good works.7 Bavinck credited Ritschl for recovering justification’s importance at a time when it had been confused with sanctification, and for insisting the church as a whole, not only individuals, is the object of election, but faulted him for “one-sided focus on God’s love and his denial of God’s wrath on sin” and for a resulting “indifference to personal justification and assurance.”7

Historical Significance

Bavinck judged that Ritschl “tragically separated theology from metaphysics,” a move that gave religion, both objectively and subjectively, “a small place” and made it subservient to culture.7 This produced among his followers a “cultural optimism (Kulturseligkeit),” the belief that the kingdom of God meant the improvement of human civilization, until confidence in that progress gave way to a longing for a more mystical Christianity; Ritschl’s own theological method eventually yielded ground to the history-of-religions school on one side and the psychology of religion on the other.7 Ritschlian theology also had “a profound influence beyond Germany itself, especially in America,” feeding into the Social Gospel movement.4

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science.” ↩

  2. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 6, “Faith.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 15, “The Servant Savior: Christ’s Humiliation.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩ ↩2

  5. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 8, “The Living, Acting God.” ↩ ↩2

  6. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 19, “Faith and Conversion.” ↩

  7. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 17, “The Order of Salvation.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4