On Some German Affinities with the Oxford Movement

Abstract

THE historian, J. A. Froude, remarked in later life that the whole history of the Oxford Movement, if not of the English Church, would have been different if Newman had known German1. The insinuation is, presumably, that in the German critical theology of the period the Oxford Reformers would have found the historical refutation of their catholicising doctrine and so have desisted from their purpose. Now, though Newman himself knew no German, others did. Indeed, the real progenitor of the Oxford Movement was the Rev. Hugh James Rose of Cambridge, when in 1825 he warned the English Church against the rationalising doctrines of German theology. According to Newman, this book first drew attention to the perils 'which lay in the biblical and theological speculations of Germany.' At first sight, then, the Oxford Movement, far from having affinities with Germany, would seem to have been actually started in reaction to German influence. But there is a wider aspect to the question which has not to my knowledge been sufficiently considered. When in July, 1833, John Keble preached his sermon on National Apostasy from the University pulpit of St Mary's, he was only bringing to a head what had been in preparation for a long time. It is, indeed, generally recognised that the Oxford Movement was but one manifestation of the larger Romantic Movement then sweeping over Europe2. In France the reaction to the Revolution and its rationalistic principles was finding expression in Le Genie du Christianisme of Chateaubriand, in Saint Martin's mysticism, and in the theocratic doctrines of Joseph de Maistre and Bonnald. The defeat of the French dreams of hegemony in Europe had everywhere roused the spirit of nationalism; in England, as in Germany, men were looking into their national origins and reviving their past history. Carlyle's Past and 1 Cf. W. Hutton, The Oxford Movement in The Cambridge History of English Literature, xnI, p. 254. 2 Cf. the significant title Northern Catholicism. Centenary Studies in the Oxford and Parallel Movements, ed. by N. P. Williams and C. Harris, London, 1933. This book is concerned, however, with the results, rather than with the genesis, of the Movement. An admirable survey of German theology in its relations to England is provided by O. Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology in Germany since Kant and its Progress in Great Britain since 1825, London, 1909. W. Vollrath in his Theologie der Gegenwart in Grossbritannien, Giitersloh, 1928, brings the story down to modern times.