Preceptor of Modern Theology
Preceptor of Modern Theology
Hagenbach and the Mediating School
This chapter considers mediating theology (Vermittlungstheologie), which dominated university theology in the mid-nineteenth century. It explores the work of K. R. Hagenbach (1801–74), whose textbooks were among the most widely read theological books across Europe and North America, constituting an invaluable resource in the history of modern theology. Hagenbach developed Schleiermacher’s ideas, it is argued, and, through his standard and extraordinarily influential introduction to the study of theology—which went through twelve editions between 1833 and 1889 and was translated into multiple languages—propagated a long-standing form of mild or moderate theological historicism across multiple generations. Mediating theology thus found its theoretical and pedagogical footings as a centrist school inclined to harmonize differences among Protestant groups and resolve tensions between liberalism and orthodoxy, speculation and history. Hagenbach’s international and transatlantic success quelled speculative theology’s advance and represented the epitome of the modern project of theology as science after Schleiermacher.
Keywords: K. R. Hagenbach, Friedrich Schleiermacher, mediating theology, Vermittlungstheologie, university theology, historicism, theological education, theological pedagogy, theology as science, Wissenschaft
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
