Ernst Troeltsch

German theologian

• Born: February 17, 1865
• Birthplace: Haunstetten, near Augsburg, Bavaria (now in Germany)
• Died: February 1, 1923
• Place of death: Berlin, Germany

Troeltsch pioneered in making the study of religion a phenomenon amenable to social and scientific analysis in contrast to the standard theological approach. His sociological method stimulated in turn the comparative study of religions and helped gain acceptance for sociology as an academic discipline. His reflections on the philosophy of religion also helped establish the credibility of that field of inquiry.

Early Life

Ernst Troeltsch (ehrnst trawlch) was the eldest son of a physician of Augsburg, where the family was prominent among the local Lutheran burgher community. Through his father, young Ernst acquired early a fascination with scientific method and observation. He later recalled his ready access in the family home to botanical and geological specimens, anatomical charts, skeletons, and a library amply endowed with scientific books. Darwinism by the 1870’s had found a welcome reception among the educated classes of Germany.

Nevertheless, after a solid grounding in the classical languages and literatures at local preparatory schools, Troeltsch gravitated toward the study of theology and particularly the relationship between Christian faith and human reason, a theme that would occupy most of his scholarly career.

Between 1884 and 1888, Troeltsch studied theology at three German universities. At Erlangen he pursued, in addition to courses in Lutheran theology, a general liberal arts curriculum that included studies in history, art history, psychology, and philosophy. The breadth and variety of this program, coupled with his enduring interest in the scientific method, led him to increasing dissatisfaction with what he regarded as the narrow, dogmatic Lutheranism of the Erlangen theology faculty.

Troeltsch therefore transferred to the more cosmopolitan University of Berlin and, within a year, to the University of Göttingen. There, after three further years of study, he received in 1888 the licentiate in theology. It was at Göttingen under the tutelage of the renowned liberal Lutheran theologian Albrecht Ritschl that Troeltsch’s scholarly interests came into focus. Yet, while he learned much from Ritschl’s neo-Kantian perspectives and his insights regarding Christian values as essentially independent of scientific verification, Troeltsch eventually broke with his mentor.

What Troeltsch could not accept was Ritschl’s fully transcendent, ahistorical approach to the history of Christianity. Troeltsch had become convinced that theological study could no longer be based only on dogmatic authority. If theology were to be intellectually respectable it must, in his judgment, be subjected to the rigors of the scientific and historical methods. Troeltsch envisioned nothing less than a rational theory of religion rooted in concrete historical investigations. Since in his view religion had, like humankind, evolved across time, the Christian religion in particular should be studied within the framework of the comparative history of religions.

This was the message that the still obscure young scholar Troeltsch proclaimed at a meeting of German theologians in 1896. When his dramatic assertion that the old ways of theological study were tottering was sharply rebuked by a senior theologian present, Troeltsch angrily departed the assembly, slamming the door behind him. He was ready to carry forward the broad program of theological renewal that he had contemplated.

After a year as a Lutheran pastor, Troeltsch had in 1891 accepted his first academic position as a lecturer in theology at the University of Göttingen. The following year, he became associate professor of theology at the University of Bonn, where he remained until his elevation in 1904 to a full professorship in systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg. His final move came in 1915, when the now-renowned scholar became professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin. He developed his ideas within the framework of his teaching responsibilities at these institutions.

Life’s Work

Troeltsch identified the great spiritual dilemma of his time as the “dissolution of all norms and values under the endless turbulence of the currents of historical life.” He related this crisis in coherence and meaning in large measure to the decline of religion as a vital force in society. A multifaceted intellectual movement called historicism had since the latter nineteenth century stressed the relentless relativity of things, both in nature and in history. Although Troeltsch shared many of the premises and conclusions of historicism, as a committed Christian he took it as his urgent scholarly task to confront the historicist challenge to provide a tenable new coherence to religion and to history.

Troeltsch’s problem from the outset remained the great rift between the skepticism generated by what he called “the ceaseless flow and manifold contradictions within the sphere of history, and the demand of the religious consciousness for certainty, for unity and for peace.” To bridge this gap and meet the challenge of historicism, Troeltsch determined to lay the foundations of a general theory of religion. He sought above all an extrahistorical basis for what he called “the morality of conscience . . . amid the flux and confusion of the life of the instincts.”

In a series of essays beginning in 1895, Troeltsch tried to establish religion as a natural human phenomenon with its roots in the structure of the human mind, parallel to the various realms of reason affirmed in the famous critiques of Immanuel Kant. Troeltsch attempted to formulate a law that would, above any historical experience, attest the a priori existence of religious ideas such as a “morality of conscience” in human beings. If he could confirm the existence of a mental structure where religious ideas originated, he believed that he could demonstrate the actuality of the absolute in finite consciousness, a point at which the infinite and the finite would meet, thereby neutralizing permanently the acids of relativism on moral values. A “science of religion” could then be philosophically validated to protect objective norms of the religious consciousness. Yet because Troeltsch was ultimately unable to define convincingly the lines of the a priori connection of the finite with the infinite, he was forced to conclude that the human mind was capable of grasping only particular historical circumstances. In short, Troeltsch found his old historicist apprehensions reaffirmed.

Troeltsch was also compelled in the process to reject all arguments for the absoluteness and uniqueness of Christianity among the world’s religions. While Troeltsch’s early essays affirmed Christianity as the supreme faith, further study and reflection led him to quite another verdict. In his Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte (1902; The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions , 1971), he surmised that “it is impossible to construct a theory of Christianity as an absolute religion on the basis of any historical way of thinking, or by the use of historical means.” He had already rejected arguments for the primacy of Christianity based on dogma or on miracles: “Divine activity cannot be assumed to fill gaps in the causal sequence.” For Troeltsch the baffling complexity of the problem lay precisely in the sheer interconnectedness of all that exists, what he described as “the relation of individual historical facts to standards of value within the entire domain of history” in his late work Der Historismus und seine Probleme (1922; Historicism and Its Problems , 1922).

Convinced in theory of the intrinsically conditional character of human experience, Troeltsch resolved increasingly after 1905 to test his abstract reflections on the philosophy of religion in a series of concrete historical investigations. In the process, he would generate significant new insights and methods for the scholarly study of religion. Inspired in part by the sociological studies of his celebrated friend Max Weber, Troeltsch began to examine in their historical contexts a number of questions previously raised solely from a theological vantage.

These investigations culminated in his massive Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1912; The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches , 1931). Troeltsch here applied the new sociological perspective and method to the whole of Christian history over the first seventeen centuries of its existence to the age of the Enlightenment. He proposed to determine the extent to which the Christian religion had been influenced by the web of secular forces in its environment.

Drawing his evidence primarily from the ethical and social teachings of the Christian churches and sects within the context of each age, Troeltsch concluded that the religious teachings, beliefs, and organization of the premodern Christian past were demonstrably affected by the social milieu of their origins. The central moral and social doctrines of Christianity did not reflect either an absolute ethic or a pure religious spirit but simply various Christian social communities coming to terms with the world around them.

Troeltsch illustrated this interaction through a set of ideal types derived in large measure from Weber but modified to account for specific historical situations. Troeltsch found three main social expressions of Christianity’s relationship with the world: a church type that encompassed the majority of Christians, a minority sect type that developed largely in reaction to the mainline church-type structures, and, finally, a highly personal mystical type. For Troeltsch, the story of Christianity was essentially a series of responses or reactions that ranged across a continuum that included the various compromises made by the church-type communities through the outright rejection of the world’s values as in the extreme sectarian type to the even more individualistic mystical form. Troeltsch’s theory of church types has remained among the most influential of his ideas.

Although greatly discouraged by the failure of his historical research to provide a firmer foundation for his metaphysical conjectures, Troeltsch continued to seek clearer answers to the urgent question as to what one can know for certain in a situation whose subjective and contingent character remained insurmountable. He would remain disappointed. By the time of his death in early 1923, Christianity had become for him “a purely historical, individual, relative phenomenon,” bound up inseparably with European culture. The concept of a pluralism of religions and of religious values became a dominant theme in his last writings.

If neither an a priori “science of religion” nor the absolute status of Christianity could be sustained by the methods of theology, philosophy, or history, what instruction or solace might Troeltsch offer to one adrift in the sea of relativism? To avert what he saw as the debacle of “absolute relativism,” he devised a rationale based on the subjective value of Chistianity to the individual. Troeltsch, unable to achieve scientific verification for his investigations, related the validity of Christianity directly to the subjective judgment of each Christian: “No physics . . . biology . . . psychology or theory of evolution can take from us our belief in the living, creative purpose of God.”

While Christianity remained for Troeltsch a relative phenomenon when considered in its purely historical dimensions, he insisted that there were still moral values to be derived from it, norms of conduct that are “true for us [in] the religion through which we have been formed, a part of our being.” Each Christian encounters the truth of Christianity for himself within the context of the local cult or church community, or in his heart.

In short, the objective and universal validity of Christian ethics was mediated to individuals only in a subjective mode. The validity of Christianity as an ethical religion lies therefore in an ever-renewed commitment of each Christian, an act of will, based on faith. As he wrote in his last work: “In every cycle of cultural values it is faith that ultimately decides and here too it is faith that justifies.” Troeltsch thus found the general validity he sought neither in philosophy nor in history but through his religious belief, a version of the justification by faith precept from the Lutheran heritage of his youth.

Significance

Troeltsch was an extraordinarily prolific writer. His fourteen books and more than five hundred additional publications reflect the wide range of his scholarly interests, particularly in the philosophy and sociology of religion and in the historiography of Christianity. To the degree that he was never able to find a firm basis within history for the absolute values he sought, his life’s work clearly fell short of his original aspirations. Yet the boldness and the magnitude of the issues that he raised and the continuing influence of his sociological approach to religious studies lend an enduring interest and merit to his major writings. He wrestled above all with a question that had long baffled theologians and philosophers alike, namely how to bridge the great chasm between the contingent realm of history and the domain of the absolute.

Compelled by his rigorous scientific methodology to remove the absolute from history, Troeltsch had to face the intellectual and spiritual consequences of his human predicament. With deep religious convictions at the personal level, he found himself caught between the need to believe and the pressing demands of the scientific method that he had imbibed from childhood. His friend Friedrich Meinecke ruefully described Troeltsch’s plight as that of the ancient sages Heraclitus and Archimedes combined: “All is flux; give me a place to stand.” It was in seeking a place to stand amid the historicist winds that appeared to have swept away all certainty in human affairs that Troeltsch identified the broad contours of the problem and the methods of scholarly inquiry through which to approach it. Subsequent generations have taken up the search where he left it.

Bibliography

Antoni, Carlo. From History to Sociology: The Transition in German Historical Thinking. Translated by Hayden V. White. London: Merlin Press, 1962. This work, originally published in 1939, contains an extensive pioneering essay on the dilemma of Troeltsch as theologian and as historian caught between the theologian’s yearning for absolutes and the insistent counterclaims of historicism and the new sociology.

Chapman, Mark D. Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Examines German liberal theology in the early years of the twentieth century (before World War I), by focusing on Troeltsch’s work. Places his theology within the social and political context of Wilhelmine Germany.

Clayton, John P., ed. Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology. London: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Contains six essays by Troeltsch scholars that focus primarily on the relevance of his thought to current theological concerns. A noteworthy feature of the bibliography is an extensive listing of Troeltsch’s works that are available in English translation.

Pauck, Wilhelm. Harneck and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Pauck’s essay remains the best single introduction to Troeltsch’s career. Having studied under Troeltsch at the University of Berlin, Pauck provides a balanced but sympathetic portrait of the man as well as the thinker. He stresses Troeltsch’s abiding conviction that modern theology cannot survive without availing itself of the historical and sociological perspectives.

Reist, Benjamin A. Toward a Theology of Involvement: The Thought of Ernst Troeltsch. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966. Concentrating mainly on Troeltsch’s two most celebrated works, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches and Historicism and Its Problems, Reist analyzes Troeltsch’s impressive attempt at situating a theology of culture and of Christian involvement in a pluralist social environment. He concludes that Troeltsch’s failure to resolve his doubts about the uniqueness of Christianity was nevertheless a success in that it helped set the agenda for a continuing debate.

Rubanowice, Robert J. Crisis in Consciousness: The Thought of Ernst Troeltsch. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1982. This account of Troeltsch’s development as teacher, thinker, and politician attempts to evaluate his career as a whole. The author places Troeltsch firmly and convincingly within the context of twentieth century intellectual history, especially in regard to his philosophy of history, his historical method, and his political thought.