Albrecht Ritschl

Ritschl, Albrecht (1822–89), German Protestant theologian. He was professor of theology first at Bonn and then at Göttingen. He insisted on the irreducibility of religion to other forms of experience. We apprehend by faith, not by reason, and this faith rests not on the intellectual apprehension of facts but on the making of value-judgements. He further insisted that it was to a community, not to individuals, that the Gospel was, and still is, committed. It is in and through the community that justification is primarily achieved. His writings, and especially Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (1870–4), exercised great influence on the theology of Germany in the late 19th cent. The so-called ‘Ritschlian School’ was characterized by its stress on ethics and on the ‘community’, and by its repudiation of metaphysics and religious experience.

Albrecht Ritschl , 1822-89, German Protestant theologian. He taught theology at Bonn (1851-64) and at Göttingen (from 1864). The Ritschlian theology, a reaction against rationalism, was influential in the 19th and early 20th cent. Ritschl held that God could be known only through the revelation contained in the works and person of Jesus. His theology stressed ethics and the community of man and repudiated metaphysics. Ritschl's most characteristic work has been translated as The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (Vol. I and III, 1872 and 1900). His son Otto Ritschl wrote his biography (2 vol., 1892-96).

Bibliography: See also E. A. Edghill, Faith and Fact: A Study of Ritschlianism (1910); P. J. Hefner, Faith and the Vitalities of History (1966); D. W. Lotz, Ritschl and Luther (1974).