Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University

Thomas Albert Howard

Awarded the Lilly Fellows Program Book Award 2007
An original synthesis of modern German intellectual and political history, the history of higher education, and the history of modern theology
Explores the influence of German higher education and theology in the United States with relevance to a variety of academic communities

Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University

Thomas Albert Howard

Description

In shaping the modern academy and in setting the agenda of modern Christian theology, few institutions have been as influential as the German universities of the nineteenth century. This book examines the rise of the modern German university from the standpoint of the Protestant theological faculty, focusing especially on the University of Berlin (1810), Prussia's flagship university in the nineteenth century. In contradistinction to historians of modern higher education who often overlook theology, and to theologians who are frequently inattentive to the social and institutional contexts of religious thought, Thomas Albert Howard argues that modern university development and the trajectory of modern Protestant theology in Germany should be understood as interrelated phenomena.

Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University

Thomas Albert Howard

I. Introduction
1. Theology, Modernity, and the German University
2. On the State and Modern Science `in the German sense'
3. Plan of Study
4. Broader Considerations, or `the Pathos of Modern Theology'
II. Sacra Facultas and the Coming of German Modernity
Introduction
5. The Medieval Legacy
6. Humanism, the Reformation, and the Universities
7. The Eighteenth Century: Decline and Critique
8. The Way Forward: Halle and Gottingen
9. `Torchbearer or Trainbearer?' The Faculties and Immanuel Kant
III. Wissenschaft, and the Founding of the University of Berlin
Introduction
10. Revolutionary Times and the Ascendancy of Wissenschaft
11. `A New Creation'
12. Theology and the Idea of the University
13. Early Operations: Berlin's Theological Faculty, 1810-1819
14. `Renewing Protestantism': Schleiermacher and the Challenge of Modern Theological Education
IV. An Erastian Modernity? Church, State, and Education in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia
Introduction
15. Church and State before 1806
16. 1806 and the Prussian Kultusministerium
17. `A Realm of the Intelligence': Minister Altenstein and his Legacy
V. Theologia between Science and the State
Introduction
18. Historical Trends and Developments, 1810-1918
19. The Rise and Fall of `Theological Encyclopedia'
20. History, Commemoration, and University
21. `The Age of German Footnotes': Visitors from Abroad, Admirers from Afar
22. `The Crisis of the Theological Faculty': Lagarde, Overbeck, and Harnack
Conclusion: Janus Gazing

Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University

Thomas Albert Howard

Author Information

Tal Howard is Associate Professor of History at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. He is also the founding director of the Jerusalem and Athens Forum, an honors program in the history of Christian thought and literature. He has received fellowships from the Erasmus Institute (University of Notre Dame), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (University of Virginia).