This session will explore ancient Christian influences on nineteenth-century European theologians addressing issues associated with modernity in a post-Enlightenment context, especially the ancient sources they used to address modern theological concerns in a context featuring fundamental changes. The session's motivation to identify the use of these ancient influences addresses a neglected aspect of nineteenth-century theology. The first presentation focuses on an Apostles' Creed-centered discourse that significantly affected ecclesiastic policy, and addresses some of the complexities of the interaction of theology and science in the Swiss context. The second presentation focuses on the reception of Augustine's ideas among French Jansenists, including insights into doctrinal developments. The final presentation highlights the work of the French Catholic scholar Joseph Turmel and his use of Patristic scholarship.
This paper examines a lecture given by Emil Hegg titled, “The So-Called Apostles’ Creed”, which sparked a dispute among ecclesial and civil authorities in Bern, Switzerland, leading to the Reformed Church of Bern becoming confession-free. It provides insights into the lesser-known logic, culture, context of the modern Swiss Reformers in Bern. It demonstrates this logic (the “evangelical freedom of conscience”) as it is employed successfully through his labor with the “Reform-association”, associated with the Tübingen School of Theology, which aimed to enact ecclesial reform, a more expansive Protestant piety, and a more civil relation between the church and the academy. This is mediated through Hegg’s quasi-Hegelian concept of the “evangelical freedom of conscience” and his clear anti-Catholic tendencies, which drive his rhetoric and reform. This paper aims to elucidate the principles behind the reform movement in Bern, particularly due to its distinctive church-state relation and the turmoil surrounding Hegg’s lectures.
In nineteenth-century France, the history of Christian theological reception became a particular history of the reception of Augustine known as Jansenism. Key tenets included irresistible grace, the impossibility of fulfilling some commandments, internal necessity not excusing sinful acts and Jesus Christ suffering and dying for the elect only. Augustine’s later, anti-Pelagian writings were especially important in his Jansenist reception, with the most important dissemination being via the principal manual used in seminaries. Editions of patristic texts and studies of patristic theologians from this period lacked critical edge and their compilers did not usually view them as part of a developmental trajectory in doctrine. Towards the middle of the century, the picture was transformed by a revolution in how theological texts were received and a huge expansion in the number and variety of texts available due to the work of the Abbé Jacques-Paul Migne.
Joseph Turmel (1859–1943), considered the foremost French Catholic Patristic scholar of his time, was exceptional in putting his erudition to work, though strikingly not to contribute to systematic theology but to undermine it. Convinced, as a result of his exegetical and historical studies, that the church has duped him with a fabricated account of Christian history/theology, he decided to remain within the church while, through his own and, increasingly, pseudonymous publications, working to subvert it.
Matters reached a crisis point when, in 1906 and 1907, Turmel published two series of articles in the Revue d'histoire et de literature religieuses. This paper attends to the first of these, on the dogma of the Trinity in the first three centuries. It examines Turmel’s strategy of subversion, considers orthodox responses to his articles, and briefly touches upon a campaign to identify him as their author.