The Quest for the Historical Essence of Ernst Troeltsch

Abstract

Until the seventies, Karl Barth's picture of Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) dominated the Anglo-phone reception of Troeltsch. In this reading, Troeltsch is the last of the great liberal protestant theologians who endeavoured to save Christianity by romanticising the Enlightenment. But that was Barth's Troeltsch. The past twenty years of Troeltsch studies have undermined this hegemonic view to recover a proto—postmodern thinker who recognised the profound cultural implications of the epistemological views embedded in modern science as in history and sociology. For Troeltsch the implications of epistemological relativity and historical relativism required the historicisation of the essence of Christianity. It also required a reformulation of the central doctrines of Christian faith; this was Troeltsch's theological project. Finally, it required a search for a modern form of Christian faith which authenticated personal mysticism and achieved normative Christian community life within a broader domain of a secular social democratic polity.