of Jesus Christ revealed to the community. That God is love and that the purpose of His love is the moral organization of humanity in the “Kingdom of God” — this idea, with its immense range of application — is applied in Ritschl's initial datum.
From this vantage-ground Ritschl criticizes the use of Aristotelianism and speculative philosophy in scholastic and Protestant theology. He holds that such philosophy is too shallow for theology. Hegelianism attempts to squeeze all life into the categories of logic: Aristotelianism deals with “things in general” and ignores the radical distinction between nature and spirit. Neither Hegelianism nor Aristotelianism is “vital” enough to sound the depths of religious life. Neither conceives “God” as correlative to human “trust” (cf. Theologie und Metaphysik, esp. p. 8 seq.). But Ritschl's recoil carries him so far that he is left alone with merely “practical” experience. “Faith” knows God in His active relation to the “kingdom,” but not at all as “self-existent.”
His limitation of theological knowledge to the bounds of human need might, if logically pressed, run perilously near phenomenalism; and his epistemology (“we only know things in their activities”) does not cover this weakness. In seeking ultimate reality in the circle of “active conscious sensation,” he rules out all “metaphysic.” Indeed, much that is part of normal Christian faith — e.g. the Eternity of the Son — is passed over as beyond the range of his method. Ritschl's theory of “value-judgments” (Werthurtheile) illustrates this form of agnosticism. Religious judgments of value determine objects according to their bearing on our moral and spiritual welfare. They imply a lively sense of radical human need. This sort of knowledge stands quite apart from that produced by “theoretic” and “disinterested” judgments. The former moves in a world of “values,” and judges things as they are related to our “fundamental self-feeling.” The latter moves in a world of cause and effect. (N.B. Ritschl appears to confine Metaphysic to the category of Causality.) The theory as formulated has such grave ambiguities, that his theology, which, as we have seen, is wholly based on uncompromising religious realism, has actually been charged with individualistic subjectivism. If Ritschl had clearly shown that judgments of value enfold and transform other types of knowledge, just as the “spiritual man” includes and transfigures but does not annihilate the “natural man,” then within the compass of this spiritually conditioned knowledge all other knowledge would be seen to have a function and a home. The theory of value-judgments is part too of his ultra-practical tendency: both “metaphysic” and “mysticism” are ruthlessly condemned. Faith-knowledge appears to be wrenched from its bearings and suspended in mid-ocean. Perhaps if he had lived to see the progress of will-psychology he might have welcomed the hope of a more spiritual philosophy.
A few instances will illustrate Ritschl's positive systematic theology. The conception of God as Father is given to the community in Revelation. He must be regarded in His active relationship to the “kingdom,” as spiritual personality revealed in spiritual purposiveness. His “Love” is His will as directed towards the realization of His purpose in the kingdom. His “Righteousness” is His fidelity to this purpose. With God as “First Cause” or “Moral Legislator” theology has no concern; nor is it interested in the “speculative” problems indicated by the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. “Natural theology” has no value save where it leans on faith. Again, Christ has for the religious life of the community the unique value of Founder and Redeemer. He is the perfect Revelation of God and the Exemplar of true religion. His work in founding the kingdom was a personal vocation, the spirit of which He communicates to believers, “thus, as exalted king,” sustaining the life of His Kingdom. His Resurrection is a necessary part of Christian belief (G. Ecke, pp. 198-99). “Divinity” is a predicate applied by faith to Jesus in His founding and redeeming activity. We note here that though Ritschl gives Jesus a unique and unapproachable position in His active relation to the kingdom, he declines to rise above this relative teaching. The “Two Nature” problem and the eternal relation of the Son to the Father have no bearing on experience, and therefore stand outside the range of theology.
Once more, in the doctrine of sin and redemption, the governing idea is God's fatherly purpose for His family. Sin is the contradiction of that purpose, and guilt is alienation from the family. Redemption, justification, regeneration, adoption, forgiveness, reconciliation all mean the same thing the restoration of the broken family relationship. All depends on the Mediation of Christ, who maintained the filial relationship even to His death, and communicates it to the brotherhood of believers. Everything is defined by the idea of the family. The whole apparatus of “forensic” ideas (law, punishment, satisfaction, &c.) is summarily rejected as foreign to God's purpose of love. Ritschl is so faithful to the standpoint of the religious community, that he has nothing definite to say on many inevitable questions, such as the relation of God to pagan races. His school, in which J. G. W. Herrmann, Julius Kaftan and Adolf Harnack are the chief names, diverges from his teaching in many directions; e.g. Kaftan appreciates the mystical side of religion, Harnack's criticism is very different from Ritschl's arbitrary exegesis. They are united on the value of faith-knowledge as opposed to “metaphysic.”
See A. Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3rd ed., 1889); Unterricht in der Christlichen Lehre (very many editions); and Theologie und Metaphysik (2nd ed., 1887), give his main position. Many historical and other works besides. — E. Bertrand, Une nouvelle conception de la rédemption. La Doctrine de la justification et de la réconciliation dans le systeme de Ritschl (1891); H. Schoen, Les Origines historiques de la théologie de Ritschl (1893); G. Ecke, Die theologische Schule, A. Ritschl's und die evangelische Kirche der Gegenwart (1897); James Orr, The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith (London, 1898); and A. E. Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology (Edinburgh, 1899), in both of which the bibliography of the movement is given. Cf. Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology in Germany since Kant (1890). The German literature on the subject is very large; see article in Herzog-Hauck, vol. xvii.
RITSCHL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1806-1876), German
scholar, was born in 1806 in Thuringia. His family, in which
culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who
had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia.
Ritschl was fortunate in his school training, at a time when
the great reform in the higher schools of Prussia had not yet
been thoroughly carried out. His chief teacher, Spitzner,
a pupil of Gottfried Hermann, divined the boy's genius and
allowed it free growth, applying only so much either of stimulus
or of restraint as was absolutely needful. After a wasted year
at the university of Leipzig, where Hermann stood at the
zenith of his fame, Ritschl passed in 1826 to Halle. Here he
came under the powerful influence of Reisig, a young
“Hermannianer” with exceptional talent, a fascinating personality
and a rare gift for instilling into his pupils his own ardour for
classical study. The great controversy between the “Realists”
and the “Verbalists” was then at its height, and Ritschl
naturally sided with Hermann against Boeckh. The early
death of Reisig in 1828 did not sever Ritschl from Halle, where
he began his professorial career with a great reputation and
brilliant success, but soon hearers fell away, and the pinch of
poverty compelled his removal to Breslau, where he reached
the rank of “ordinary” professor in 1834, and held other
offices. The great event of Ritschl's life was a sojourn of
nearly a year in Italy (1836-37), spent in libraries and museums,
and more particularly in the laborious examination of the
Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus at Milan. The remainder
of his life was largely occupied in working out the material then
gathered and the ideas then conceived. Bonn, whither he
removed on his marriage in 1839, and where he remained for
twenty-six years, was the great scene of his activity both as
scholar and as teacher. The philological seminary which he
controlled, although nominally only joint-director with Welcker,
became a veritable officina litterarum, a kind of Isocratean
school of classical study; in it were trained many of the
foremost scholars of the last forty years. The names of Georg
Curtius, Ihne, Schleicher, Bernays, Ribbeck, Lorenz, Vahlen,
Hübner, Bücheler, Helbig, Benndorf, Riese, Windisch, who
were his pupils either at Bonn or at Leipzig, attest his fame and
power as a teacher. In 1854 Otto Jahn took the place of the
venerable Welcker at Bonn, and after a time succeeded in
dividing with Ritschl the empire over the philological school
there. The two had been friends, but after gradual estrangement
a violent dispute arose between them in 1865, which for
many months divided into two hostile forces the universities
and the press of Germany. Both sides were steeped in fault,
but Ritschl undoubtedly received harsh treatment from the
Prussian government, and pressed his resignation. He accepted
a call to Leipzig, where he died in harness in 1876.
Ritschl's character was strongly marked. The spirited element in him was powerful, and to some at times he seemed overbearing, but his nature was noble at the core; and, though intolerant of inefficiency and stupidity, he never asserted his personal claims in any mean or petty way. He was warmly attached to family and friends, and yearned continually after sympathy, yet he established real intimacy with only a few. He had a great faculty for organization, as is shown by his
