Richard Rothe - Theology

Theology

As a youth Rothe had a bent towards a supernatural mysticism; his chosen authors were those of the romantic school, and Novalis remained throughout his life a special favourite. In Berlin and Wittenberg he came under the influence of Pietism as represented by such men as Rudolf Stier and Friedrich Tholuck, though Tholuck pronounced him a "very modern Christian." He afterwards confessed that, though he had been a sincere, he was never a happy, Pietist. In Rome, under the broadening influence of classical and ecclesiastical art, he learned to look at Christianity in its human and universalistic aspects, and began to develop his great idea, the inseparable relation of religion and morals. He began then, and particularly after the revolution of July 1830, likewise to give a more definite form to his peculiar view of the relations of church and state. He thus became out of harmony with the pietistic thought and life of Wittenberg. His removal to Heidelberg and the publication of his first important work, Die Anfänge der christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung (1837), coincide with the attainment of the principal theological positions with which his name is associated. During the middle period of his career (1837-61) he led the life of a scholastic recluse. During the last six years of his life he came forward as the advocate of a free theology and of the Protestantenverein.

Rothe was one of the most profound and influential of modern German theologians. Like Schleiermacher he combined with the keenest logical faculty an intensely religious spirit, while his philosophical tendencies were in sympathy rather with Hegel than with Schleiermacher, and theosophic mysticism was more congenial to him than the abstractions of Spinoza, to whom Schleiermacher owed so much. He classed himself among the theosophists, and claimed to be a convinced and happy supernaturalist in a scientific age. His system, though it may seem to contain doubtful or even fantastic elements, is in its general outlines a noble massive whole, constructed by a profound, comprehensive, fearless and logical mind. A peculiarity of his thought was the realistic nature of his spiritualism: his abstractions are all real existences; his spiritual entities are real and corporeal; his truth is actual being. Hence Rothe, unlike Schleiermacher, lays great stress, for instance, on the personality of God, on the reality of the worlds of good and evil spirits, and on the visible second coming of Christ. Hence his religious feeling and theological speculation demanded their realization in a kingdom of God coextensive with man's nature, terrestrial history and human society.