The Struggle for the German Church

HAROLD 0. J. BROWN

To many of us—including the author, who first studied theology in Germany and at Harvard from 1955-1959—it seems that theological radicalism, especially German theological radicalism, has been with us for a long, long time. Of course other countries have had their theological radicals too, but the scholarship, industry and productivity of German theologians for the last two centuries has enabled them to play a pre-eminent role in the intellectual development of world Protestantism. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) shocked the Christians of his day with his posthumously published Wolfenbüttel Fragments, in which he claimed that Jesus was a political Messiah who failed, and whose disappointed followers had turned Him into a religious figure after His execution. During his lifetime, Reimarus behaved as a conforming Christian and wrote and published orthodox books; only after his death did his rejection of traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus become known.

HAROLD 0. J. BROWN

To many of us—including the author, who first studied theology in Germany and at Harvard from 1955-1959—it seems that theological radicalism, especially German theological radicalism, has been with us for a long, long time. Of course other countries have had their theological radicals too, but the scholarship, industry and productivity of German theologians for the last two centuries has enabled them to play a pre-eminent role in the intellectual development of world Protestantism. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) shocked the Christians of his day with his posthumously published Wolfenbüttel Fragments, in which he claimed that Jesus was a political Messiah who failed, and whose disappointed followers had turned Him into a religious figure after His execution. During his lifetime, Reimarus behaved as a conforming Christian and wrote and published orthodox books; only after his death did his rejection of traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus become known.