The Making of Modern German Christology, 1750-1990, Second Edition: 1750-1990

by Alister E. McGrath

The Making of Modern German Christology' is a reliable and readable introduction to the central themes and personalities of modern German Christology. Germany and northern Switzerland have been the source of a fertile theological tradition since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Moreover, the Enlightenment seems to have had its deepest theological impact in Germany and on one area of theology in the person and work of Christ. Now that chapter in church history seems to be coming to a close with a shift in theological emphasis away from the Continent to North America. This book, revised and updated from an earlier British edition, is therefore a survey of that major chapter in modern theology for students and informed laypeople.

Genres: Theology

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005. He is an Anglican priest and is ordained within the Church of England.

Aside from being a faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. McGrath holds three doctorates from the University of Oxford, a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics, a Doctor of Divinity in Theology and a Doctor of Letters in Intellectual History.

McGrath is noted for his work in historical theology, systematic theology, and the relationship between science and religion, as well as his writings on apologetics. He is also known for his opposition to New Atheism and antireligionism and his advocacy of theological critical realism. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, and A Scientific Theology. He is also the author of a number of popular textbooks on theology.

Reviews

[Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear history of post-Enlightenment Christology, the primary currents of which are German, for reasons McGrath explains in the book.

It begins with the Enlightenment project of Kant and his disciples to establish religion on purely rational grounds. Schleiermacher is seen as a reaction to this. He grounded theology on the religious feeling, the feeling of absolute dependence.

The appearance of Hegel shifted the philosophical ground on which theology operated. This project represented by Strauss and Baur led to a new attempt to ground Christology in the history ‘behind‘ the gospels. The final result was to exclude most of the gospel materials from theology. Further undermining Schleiermacher was Feuerbach contention that we don’t need to see God in the religious feeling of dependence. This influence Marx and Freud in their view of religion as projection of human feeling.

Following this was a rejection of Hegel and a reemergence of a subjective Christology as embodied in Ritschl. He took not the religious feeling as the ground rather he looked to the ethical actions that Christ motivates. Eventually this also collapses as Weiss, Wrede, and Schweitzer undermine a purely ethical reading of Jesus. Jesus is rather an apocalyptic prophet. The purely ethical kingdom of God does not match Jesus own preaching about the kingdom, which was highly political.

The failure of pre-Great War liberalism led to the founding of the dialectical theology of Barth. The theology of crisis that made revelation a personal event more existential than historical. Christ is a pattern of God’s activity, but in effect, he didn’t do anything, only revealed who God is. Christ’s uniqueness is undermined.

Bultmann seeks again to set Christology on a historical ground, but a history that is demythologized. The inconvenience supernatural events recorded in the gospel are only myths that point to truths. This approach was again critiqued as reading into revelation rather than letting revelation speak.

Pannenberg developed a brilliant new synthesis that grounds theology in history and the apocalyptic through the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is the marker for the end of the world - it marks the beginning of the end and all history and theology must be read through this culmination point of history.

Moltmann develops this further into the crucified God who suffers as Christ. These newer currents build on the previous development and look to cultural indicators to communicate theology, but have a much closer tie to the pre-enlightenment reformers than much of the previous 200 years of theology.

There are three elements McGrath highlights.
1. The role of cultural accommodations that often form theology to what the contemporaries are demanding.
2. The Role of Jesus in Christology. Does he merely provide insight, or did he do something that changed everything.
3. The influence of philosophy and the detour the Enlightenment and its reactions had on theology and the return to limitations of the current philosophical model compared to the historical truths of the gospels.

He also provides a glossary of German terms that are important in Christology.

A valuable addition to a theological library, as is nearly everything by Alister McGrath.

[Dan Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not read the entire book (perhaps half of it, in sections), but it was solid and I plan to read it cover to cover. I read this alongside primary source readings for a class in modern (mainly) German theology. It is a good guide and that is why I want to come back to it. German Christology (and theology in general) was exported around the world and is largely responsible for what we think of as Mainline Protestant Liberalism. There were liberal interpretations and movements elsewhere, of course, but the Germans were the big movers. Other good guides on this topic are Klaus Bockmuehl's books, "The Story of Modern Protestant Theology" (which unfortunately and frustratingly has no footnotes or index - I think it was compiled from class lecture notes) and his "The Unreal God of Modern Theology: Bultmann, Barth, and the theology of atheism: a call to recovering (sic) the truth of God's reality" (which has endnotes, but no index).

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a page-turner, but McGrath wrote with enough narrative to keep me turning the pages. There needs to be enough interest in the topic before starting the book to make the effort worth it, since the books assumes quite a bit of background knowledge of the Enlightenment, historical critical method, and Christian liberalism.

One short critique, I suppose, I could mention - or maybe the constant question the book always left me hanging with throughout - was that McGrath rarely worked out how the theological methods or presuppositions affected orthodox christology in Christian Germany. The implications are there for those to see it and McGrath occasionally hinted at it, but the emphasis was usually put on theological method, rather than conclusions. He rarely compared the figures' christologies to the orthodox.

But the book was helpful, overall, as far as the project goes.

[Wyatt Houtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful history.