Some Areas To Study for Those Who Do Not Know the Influence of Halle Pietism on American Lutherans

 Spener inspired the creation of Halle University, a Biblical Pietism that rejected the Confessions and clearly borrowed from Calvinism. A link to even more about Pietism can be found here.

 As a student, Muhlenberg came under the influence of the Pietist movement through fellow students from Einbeck who had worked at the Francke Foundations in Halle (Saale), an important Pietist institution. With two other men, Muhlenberg started a charity school in Göttingen that eventually became an orphanage.^[1]

Halle Trained

1. Bishop Martin Stephan, the founder of the LCMS, 
2. Muhlenberg, the founder of the LCA, and 
3. Adolph Hoenecke, the dogmatician of WELS

The University of Halle (Universität Halle) was founded in 1694 by Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, who became Frederick I, King in Prussia, in 1701.

In the late 17th century and early 18th century, Halle became a centre for Pietism within Prussia.

Leucorea Foundation, Wittenberg.

University of Halle in 1836.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the universities were centers of the German Enlightenment. Christian Wolff was an important proponent of rationalism. He influenced many German scholars, such as Immanuel Kant. Christian Thomasius was at the same time the first philosopher in Germany to hold his lectures not in Latin, but German. He contributed to a rational programme in philosophy but also tried to establish a more common-sense point of view, which was aimed against the unquestioned superiority of aristocracy and theology.

The institutionalisation of the local language (German) as the language of instruction, the prioritisation of rationalism over religious orthodoxy, new modes of teaching, and the ceding of control over their work to the professors themselves, were among various innovations which characterised the University of Halle, and have led to its being referred to as the first “modern” university, whose liberalism was adopted by the University of Göttingen about a generation later, and subsequently by other German and then most North American universities.^[3]

Biblical criticism began as an aspect of the rise of modern culture in the West. Some scholars claim that its roots reach back to the Reformation, but most agree it grew out of the German Enlightenment. German pietismplayed a role in its development, as did British deism, with its greatest influences being rationalism and Protestant scholarship. The Enlightenment age and its skepticism of biblical and ecclesiastical authority ignited questions concerning the historical basis for the man Jesus separately from traditional theological views concerning him. This “quest” for the Jesus of history began in biblical criticism’s earliest stages, reappeared in the nineteenth century, and again in the twentieth, remaining a major occupation of biblical criticism, on and off, for over 200 years.

Schleiermacher

Born in Breslau in the Prussian Silesia as the grandson of Daniel Schleiermacher, a pastor at one time associated with the Zionites,^[12][13] and the son of Gottlieb Schleiermacher, a Reformed Church chaplain in the Prussian army, Schleiermacher started his formal education in a Moravian school at Niesky in Upper Lusatia, and at Barby near Magdeburg. However, pietistic Moravian theology failed to satisfy his increasing doubts, and his father reluctantly gave him permission to enter the University of Halle, which had already abandoned pietism and adopted the rationalist spirit of Christian Wolff and Johann Salomo Semler.

Schleiermacher’s Professorship[edit]

In 1804, Schleiermacher moved as university preacher and professor of theology to the University of Halle, where he remained until 1807, quickly obtaining a reputation as professor and preacher; he exercised a powerful influence in spite of contradictory charges which accused him of atheism, Spinozism and pietism. In this period, he began his lectures on hermeneutics (1805–1833) and he also wrote his dialogue the Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, 1806), which represents a midway point between his Speeches and his great dogmatic work, Der christliche Glaube (The Christian Faith); the speeches represent phases of his growing appreciation of Christianity as well as the conflicting elements of the theology of the period. After the Battle of Jena he returned to Berlin (1807), was soon appointed pastor of the Trinity Church, and on May 18, 1809 he married Henriette von Willich (née von Mühlenfels) (1788–1840), the widow of his friend Johann Ehrenfried Theodor von Willich (1777–1807).

At the foundation of the University of Berlin (1810), in which he took a prominent part, Schleiermacher obtained a theological chair, and soon became secretary to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He took a prominent part in the reorganization of the Prussian church, and became the most powerful advocate of the union of the Lutheran and Reformed divisions of German Protestantism, paving the way for the Prussian Union of Churches (1817). 

 Rambach was born in Halle and a true Pietist. “In 1723 he was appointed adjunct of the Theological Faculty at Halle, as also inspector of the Orphanage; in 1726 extraordinary professor of theology; and in 1727, after A. H. Francke’s death, ordinary professor as well as preacher at the Schulkirche.” Hymnary.org

Biblical Criticism – Halle Professors on the List

The Higher Critics: An Annotated Chronology, 1710-1917

Ray Dyer, PhD

1710. Halle, Germany. A Bible group begins distribution of low-cost Bibles to the poor (1804). University of Halle founded as Lutheran foundation 1694, “the first modern university”. Had renounced religious orthodoxy in favour of objective-rational science and investigation. Canonical texts were replaced by systematic lectures, and German replaced Latin as language of instruction.

1752. Semler (1775) becomes Professor of Theology at Halle (1710).

1776. Johan Jakob Griesbach (1745-1812), Professor first at Halle and then at Jena 1775, was first to challenge “Received Text” of Gospels (1831 Lachmann). He coined the term “synoptic” for the first three gospels. Epochal textual critic. Synopsis of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, 1774-76. The “Griesbach hypothesis,” gave priority to Matthew, was accepted by Strauss, Baur, and many other scholars through early Victorian years (1832). Cf. “Marcan hypothesis” (1831 ibid) (1838 1850). QHJ: Chap. X.

Scheiermacher taught Objective Justification alone – he was a Universalist.

1799. Friedrich Schleirmacher (1768-1834). the “Father of Modern Theology,” emphasized historical examination of the origins of Christianity. He taught at Halle until 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, at which point the liberal torch passed to Gottingen. He held the position of Professor of Theology at Berlin from 1810. He addressed Speeches on Religion to its “cultured despisers”. He was the first to lecture on “The Life of Jesus” beginning in 1819 . He employed rational methods in the service of theological aims (sic).

August Tholuck – He is quoted as avocating Universalism.

1837. August Tholuck (1799-1877), Professor of Theology at Halle (1826-77), was an exponent of “mediating theology” and an early critic of Strauss, appealing to Animal Magnetism as mediating means to preserving belief in supernaturalism and miracles, as would Hase by 1876 and perhaps Nippold later. GJ – Tholuck was Adolph Hoenecke’s mentor at Halle.

1857. C.K.J. “Chevalier” Bunsen (1791-1860) employed the Universal History of Egypt. Part V as his basis for challenging the “short chronology” of the Bible (Bibelwerke fur die Gemeinde (Bible Works for the Municipality), Vol. IX, Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), edited by the authoritative H. J. Holtzmann.

1884. Friedrich Emil Kautzsch (1841-1910) was Lecturer at Leipzig from 1869 and from 1872 Professor of Theology at Basle, where he knew Nietzsche. He also taught at Tubingen from 1880 and Halle from 1888. Kautzsch was a textual and linguistic specialist in Grammars of Biblical Aramaic. Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramaisch. He was a founder member of the German Society for Exploration of Palestine, and editor of Theologische Studien und Kritiker, 1888- . Cf. Dalman.

1885. Willibald J.H. Beyschlag (1823-1900), Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Halle from 1860m was the liberal-Protestant author of Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), 2 vols. (1885-86). The excellently arranged preliminary study and scholarly apparatus of the first volume is then followed by a disencumbered life in the second. Beyschlag insists on merging the Synoptics and John, and on retaining the eschatology with the spiritual, against Volkmar. Many inconsistencies are thereby noted by Schweitzer. Beyschlag attempts to resolve the problems by postulating three stages in the development of Jesus: (1) Preacher of a future and supernatural Kingdom. (2) Growing belief that the Kingdom was then presenting itself, as seen in the changes brought about in the people who flocked to Him in the middle part of the Public Life. (3) As failure began to mark the scene, thought shifted to “beyond the grave” and a “glorious return” (QHJ: 215-16).

1892. M. Kahler (1835-1912), Professor of Theology at Halle from 1862, who opposed liberal life of Jesus studies, was a proponent of the “Faith versus History” debate. In The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historical Biblical Christ (2nd ed. 1896; English translation 1964 he argued that Christianity was only interested in the latter – “The real Christ is the preached Christ” – foreshadowing the theology of Karl Barth and R. Bultmann in the 1920s, and modern studies of the Apostle Paul, the Kerygmatic Christ, and the beginning of a “New Quest”.

Let’s Not Forget the Halle Professor Who Inspired the OJ/SJ Explanation by His Calvinist Translator

Some consider Barth the ultimate non-confessional Pietist, though he claimed to loathe Pietism.