In the Footsteps of Schleiermacher: Ernst Troeltsch and the Legacy of the Glaubenslehre

When it comes to understanding the legacy and trajectories of the Protestant liberal tradition, there remains, by and large, a certain “Barthian historiography” of the nineteenth century. For the young Barth, following Bultmann’s pivotal 1924 lecture on “Liberal Theology and the Latest Theological Movement,” Troeltsch was a convenient figurehead to rally against as he attempted to stake out a new theological standpoint beyond the rubble of modern liberal theology. From this view, Troeltsch came to represent the endpoint, or dissolution even, of a tradition of Protestant theology which had dominated the long century that now seemed to have been left in ruins. The problem with this telling of the re-emergence of theology in the twentieth century is that it seems to operate with a misleading assumption of an unbridgeable rupture between the old liberal theology and the new dialectical movement. For Barth and Bultmann, this was a convenient rhetorical ploy that on the one hand, set them apart from their predecessors, and on the other hand, covered up the ways in which their own theological programs nevertheless continued to rely and extend upon key insights from the century before them. 

This is not to minimize the significance of Barth’s and Bultmann’s innovations, rather, the point is to say that by so separating the likes of Barth and Bultmann from their nineteenth-century inheritance, the precise points at which they are most original risk becoming obscured. In fact, ironically, this makes Troeltsch increasingly significant, because close attention to his particular relation to, not just Barth and Bultmann, but also his particular points of proximity to the likes of Friedrich Gogarten, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, as well as his particular points of differences from Ritschl and Herrmann can help show the extent to which these broad categories of liberal theology, dialectical theology, and especially neo-orthodoxy, while they do helpfully describe certain important theological themes, can also potentially mislead in such a way that shuts down our ability to both think with and think beyond these figures. 

Following the line of interpretation put forth by Brian Gerrish and Bruce McCormack that places Troeltsch not at the end of the nineteenth century, as Barth does, but actually alongside Barth as a rival stream within the Schleiermachian legacy as it emerges into the beginning of the twentieth century, my conviction is that Troeltsch deserves re-reading as a “dogmatic theologian,” in the sense that he represents a new beginning within the Schleiermachian tradition. The constructive question overarching this paper is that as there appears to be a return of interest in the writing of systematic theologies that are simultaneously sensitive to our historical reality, the interdisciplinary demands of the university, and the challenge of pluralism in the public sphere, could it be that now may be as good a time as any to revisit Schleiermacher’s project of Glaubenslehre as taken up by Troeltsch?

To explore this question, Section One clears the way for a theological entry point into Troeltsch’s thought by situating him within the pivotal debates at the turn of the century between the emerging dialectical theologians and the liberal tradition from which they sought to extricate themselves from. What needs to be made clear here is that the line which especially Barth and Bultmann drew between themselves and Troeltsch rested on deep theological fault lines that were oftentimes hastily brushed over in their more general attacks against “liberal theology.” Instead, by looking at dialectical theology through Gogarten and Tillich’s critical reception of Troeltsch, it becomes more evident how Troeltsch effectively sets much of the theological agenda for the various trajectories that emerge from out of this movement. The upshot of this argument is that Troeltsch is not a lame duck transitional figure in modern theology, rather, Troeltsch comes to represent a crucial breaking point at the tail end of late-nineteenth century Protestant debates. In this way, Troeltsch acts both as a bridge into the dialectical turn away from the lingering remnants of Ritschlianism, as well as its own alternative route that attempts to take up the Schleiermachian tradition in a new direction.

Section Two further refines Troeltsch’s theological context through an analysis of his reception and relation to Schleiermacher. While Troeltsch often spoke glowingly of Schleiermacher, and even envisioned himself as a disciple of the great Father of Modern Protestant Theology, it is not altogether certain to what degree Troeltsch remained a faithful follower of Schleiermacher. In this section I will advocate for a substantive, rather than merely genetic, reading of Troeltsch’s Schleiermachian lineage. This is not to deny the significant differences between the two, for Troeltsch himself admits that “scarcely one stone of Schleiermacher’s own teaching can remain upon another” (“Half a Century of Theology,” 80). Yet, it is to claim that the connection here is more than simply rhetorical or historical. The crucial point is not merely to establish a link from Schleiermacher to Troeltsch, but moreover to show the extent to which Troeltsch’s project is a distinct theological development from within the liberal tradition.

Section Three will show how the key connecting point between the two is Troeltsch’s extension of Schleiermacher’s attempt to approach the question of the essence of Christianity through an interlacing of the scientific with the theological, the dogmatic with the sociological, and the historical with the systematic. This vision for a synthesis between the Absolute and the relative drives Troeltsch, and much of the rest of theology after Schleiermacher, towards a concern to maintain the incommensurability between Spirit and matter. As a result, this is also the critical point from which Troeltsch attempts to move beyond Schleiermacher due to worries about the pantheistic elements of his notion of the immediate self-consciousness. Troeltsch proceeds to supplant Schleiermacher’s dialectical concept of the religious self-consciousness with a religious personalism that is intended to retrieve a more concrete account of divine action. The theological thrust of this move is to safeguard Glaubenslehre from being relegated to an all too passive reception, situating it instead within an ever-ongoing act of construction and development.