Karl Rudolf Hagenbach - Works

Works

Hagenbach was a voluminous author, distinguished as a writer on church history. Though neither so learned and condensed as the contributions of Gieseler, nor so original and profound as those of Neander, his lectures are clear, attractive and free from narrow sectarian prejudice. In dogmatics, while avowedly a champion of the mediation theology (German: Vermittelungstheologie), based upon the fundamental conceptions of Herder and Schleiermacher, he was much less revolutionary than were many others of his school. He sought to maintain the old confessional documents, and to make the objective prevail over the purely subjective manner of viewing theological questions. But he himself was aware that in the endeavour to do so he was not always successful, and that his delineations of Christian dogma often betrayed a vacillating and uncertain hand.

His works include:

• Tabellarische Übersicht der Dogmengeschichte (1828).
• Encyclopädie u. Methodologie der theol. Wissenschaften (1833/1889; English trans., 1884/1891).
• Vorlesungen über Wesen u. Geschichte der Reformation u. des Protestantismus (1834-1843; vol. 1-2; vol. 3; vol. 4; English transl., vol. 1, 1878; vol. 2, 1879).
• Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1840-1841, 5th ed., 1867; English transl., vol. 1, 1850, vol. 2, 1861).
• Die Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts: Aus dem Standpunkte des evangelischen Protestantismus (Part I, 1848; English transl., vol. 1, 1870; vol. 2, 1870).
• Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der alten Kirche (1853-1855).
• Vorlesungen über die Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters (1860-1861).
• German Rationalism, in its Rise, Progress, and Decline, in Relation to Theologians, Scholars, Poets, Philosophers, and the People (1865).
• Grundlinien der Homiletik u. Liturgik (1863)
• Johann Oekolampad und Oswald Myconius, die Reformatoren Basels. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (1859).
• Geschichte der theologische Schule Basels (1860).
• Predigten (“Sermons,” Basel, 1858-1875).
• Luther und seine Zeit, a book of poems (“Luther and his times,” 1838)
• Gedichte (“Poems,” Basel, 1846).

The lectures on church history under the general title Vorlesungen über die Kirchengeschichte von der ältesten Zeit bis zum 19ten Jahrhundert were reissued in seven volumes (1868-1872; vol. 1; vol. 2;vol. 3; vol. 4; vol. 5; vol. 6; vol. 7).

He edited the Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz (from 1845 to 1868), and also a series of biographies of the reformers of the Reformed Church, with selections from their writings (Leben und Schriften der Väter und Begründer der reformierten Kirche, Elberfeld, 1857-62, 10 vols.), to which he contributed the lives of Oecolampadius and Myconius (1859, see above).