4

The Kingdom of

Albrecht Ritschl and Johannes Weiss

From the time ofReimarus, much of the debate surrounding the historical has focused on the meaning of the phrase 'the kingdom of God', which all commentators believe to have been central to Jesus' teaching. To understand the di• mensions of this debate, it is helpful to return to the figure of Albrecht Ritschl, a much neglected thinker in our own time but perhaps the most important figure in the world of nine• teenth-century . Ritschl was not only influential in his own right, but he also ranks as the founder of a 'school', whose influence (whether directly or by way of reaction) can be traced as late as the work of (1884- 1976) and (1886-1968). Ritschl recognized the centrality of 'the kingdom of God' in Jesus' teaching and wished to give this concept a central place in his own theo• logical system. Yet his understanding of what Jesus' intended by that term would be soon overturned by the work of his own son-in-law, Johannes Weiss (1863-1914) and that of Al• bert Schweitzer (1875-1965). It may be noted that this fa• mous discussion has taken on a new relevance today, with the re-emergence of a loosely 'Ritschlean' understanding of 'the kingdom of God' among those scholars who see Jesus, not as an apocalyptic prophet, but as a teacher of ethical wis• dom. In this context, it is particularly important that the nineteenth-century debate not be forgotten. 152 The Historical Jesus Quest

Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) Albrecht Ritschl was born in , where his father was a pastor and a supporter of the state-supported union of the Lutheran and the Calvinist branches of Gennan Protestant• ism. When Albrecht was six years old, his family moved to the town of Stettin (now Szezczin, on the border of Poland and Gennany), where his father had been appointed 'bishop'. In 1839 he began theological studies in Bonn, where he was not only shaped by the scriptural and supernaturalistic piety of the theological faculty of that time, but also came into contact with the work of David Friedrich Strauss. From 1841-43 Ritschl studied in Halle, where he began to be in• fluenced by the 'Hegelian' school of theologians, most fa• mously (1792-1860) from Tiibin• gen. Worried by his son's turn towards such radical thinkers, Ritschl's father insisted he spend some time in Heidelberg, before allowing him to study in Tiibingen, which he did from 1845-46. Under Baur's influence, Ritschl completed and published a dissertation on Marcion's Gospel and the Ca• nonical Gospel of Luke, and in 1846 he began his teaching ca• reer in Bonn, where he soon produced a study entitled The Emergence if the Early-Catholic Church (1850). By this time Ritschl had broken with the Tiibingen school, and his for• merly wann relationship with Baur turned into conflict. Ritschl's interests now moved increasingly towards the de• velopment of a , one firmly grounded in the theology of the sixteenth-century refonners and less shaped by what he saw as the a priori philosophical convic• tions of the Tiibingen theologians In 1864 he received a chair in dogmatic theology at G6ttingen, where he remained until his death. In was during these years that Ritschl pro• duced his major, three volume work, The Christian Doctrine if Justification and Reconciliation (1871-74). In 1875 he published a summary of his theology, intended (but never used) as a school text and entitled Instruction in the Christian (the Gennan title of which calls to mind John Calvin's great work, the Institutes). The last decade of Ritschl's scholarly career was dedicated to a major study of , also issued in three volumes (1880-86), a movement which he himself