Shepherds of the Empire: Germany's Conservative Protestant Leadership--1888-1919

3. How to Honor the Bible: Martin Kähler’s Theological Views of the Bible and Ethics

3 How to Honor the Bible Martin Kähler’s Theological Views of the Bible and Ethics We Pietists and Confessionalists in the churches, at the pulpits, and in the teacher’s lecterns are those who honor the Bible (sind Bibelverehrer). The deepest foundation for this honor is that we do not merely hear other pious men and women who wrote about God in the Bible, we hear God speak to us. That is why the Bible is our best friend, and our interaction with it, in deepest trust and without interruption, is crucial for our lives. –Martin Kähler, AUFSÄTZE ZUR BIBELFRAGE (TREATISES ON BIBLE QUESTIONS)1 In his identification of the Bibelverehrer, those who honor the Bible, Adolf Stoecker’s brother-in-law and Halle systematic theologian Martin Kähler tried to find a unifying concept for orthodox Christianity. Nineteenth-century German Christians experienced a confusing proliferation of conflicting voices. Kähler believed that the appropriate interpretation of the Bible was being attacked from two sides. On the one side, critical scholars wrote of the Bible 1. Martin Kähler, “Unser Streit um die Bibel: Vorläufiges zur Verständigung und Beruhigung für ‘Bibelverehrer’ von einem der ihrigen,” in Martin Kähler, AUFSÄTZE ZUR BIBELFRAGE, ed. Ernst Kähler (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967), 20. 45 as one of many ancient texts that could be understood only through modern historical critical methods. Their in-depth scholarship of Scripture’s origins questioned every tenet of orthodox Christian belief. On the other side, certain adherents to traditional doctrines ended up destroying a true interpretation of the Bible in their attempts to salvage it. They reacted so extremely to the critics’ attacks on the Bible that they began retreating from academic inquiry. In its stead, they affirmed stringent beliefs in verbal inspiration. This doctrine held that God dictated every word of the Scriptures to its authors. These tenets excluded any possibility of questioning the intent of the biblical authors and thereby undermined academic but pious scholarship. In this theological climate, where each new book and sermon claimed to bring new insight into the very nature of Scripture, the schism in authority threatened to tear Germany’s Protestant churches apart. Martin Kähler had little interest in innovation when writing about the place of the Scriptures in Christian life. Rather, he sought to find a middle ground for modern Bibelverehrer to understand and find God’s continuing word through the Bible. Martin Kähler’s situation aided his attempt to mediate. His position in the university allowed him to interact with Christian thinkers on both sides of the divide. During his tenure, the trend in theology was that students of the Scriptures devoted themselves to minor debates over particularly difficult texts. The natural consequence was that their knowledge of the broader importance of their ideas was limited. However, Kähler’s work as a systematic theologian gave him a perspective that allowed him to look at the large questions concerning the Bible and its authority. Furthermore, his scholarship gave him literary contact with theologians from the previous century, who guided him in his own careful definition of the Bible. In the end, he defined a middle path for his fellow Bibelverehrer to travel into the twentieth century. The great achievement of his theology of God’s word was that it respected the position of the Scriptures for traditional belief without relying on an antiintellectual reaction that restricted the free access to the Bible. Kähler’s defense of the Scriptures had important ramifications in redefining the makeup of the church, describing and motivating the ethical Christian life, responding to the changing world, and knowing how to follow Jesus Christ. In spite of Kähler’s pioneering work, his efforts have been largely forgotten or misinterpreted. His attempt to bridge the rapidly separating elements of the church came too late. His efforts, though impressive, occurred at a time when the differences could no longer be brokered. The minor status later scholars assigned him does not, however, diminish the important perspectives on nineteenth-century German Christianity that arose from his writings. For an 46 | Shepherds of the Empire orthodox scholar, he displayed a surprising flexibility to contextualize his beliefs in a rapidly changing intellectual climate. Martin Kähler’s Life: The Formation of a Believing Theologian A brief summary of Kähler’s life sheds some light on his...