NEO-LUTHERANISM. - It presents itself as a current of theological and ecclesiastical revival and restoration of Lutheranism in the 19th century, in close relation to that Romantic revival of the sense of national community, matured during the anti-Napoleonic wars and the Restoration, as a reaction to the Enlightenment, rationalistic and foreign at once. It gained strength especially in 1830, when Frederick William III of Prussia sought to impose his Prussian "union" between Lutherans and Calvinists by combining the doctrines and usages of the two historic Churches.
In reaction, the dogmatic and ecclesiastical peculiarities of Lutheranism were accentuated, with the refusal to unite ecclesiastically with sects extraneous to its own tradition; and there were no extraneous political motives. The movement unfolded especially in the regions where the "union" had not been implemented, that is, in Bavaria on the right bank of the Rhine, in Saxony, in Hanover, in Mecklenburg, in Schleswig-Holstein. It gave rise to the establishment of "Free Churches" (Freikirche), with exclusive reference to the dogmatic bases of the Church, in opposition to the "established" Churches, recognized, supported, endowed, and directed by the State. Moreover, leagues of "Old Lutherans" were created in the individual territories, such as the General Evangelical-Lutheran Conference of 1868, which later also coordinated the activity of the individual Churches in the field of home and foreign missions, charitable assistance, schools and the like. The designation of N. then has a twofold meaning: polemical with regard to dogmatic indifferentism that adapts itself to extrinsic combinations of the peculiar doctrines of the Churches; historical-conservative because it intends to return to the Lutheranism of the "confessions of faith" and to the ecclesiastical and cultural organization of the 16th century, concretized in the orthodoxy of the 17th century. Hence the Catholicizing character of N. with regard to the visibility of the Church, the real character of the Eucharist, the liturgical structure of the Mass, the liturgical Ordination of pastors, the conception and administration of the Sacraments. Hence, moreover, the effort to free itself from the dependence on the territorial prince inherited from the 16th century, by affirming that situation as being in contrast with Lutheran principles and one of mere emergency, and by seeking the autonomous existence of the Church with its own ecclesiastical law.
Theologically, N. appeals to the divinehuman person of Christ, as the center of religion, and to his interpretation in St. Paul, against the merely ethical conception of Christianity spread by the Enlightenment. This Christocentric consciousness leads also to recognizing the Church as a superindividual reality, already attested in the Lutheran confessions of faith. On this foundation the sacramental element revives, not without indeed influences of the Romantic inclination for symbols; but above all there is the vigorous emphasis on the Church as depositary of the word of God and of the Sacraments, lived as a transcendent bond, but at the same time concretely historical. These positions are variously justified by individual theologians and coordinated with the Lutheran principles of "Scripture alone" and of the personal experience of the divine, and they lead to reopening discussion of the theme of the essence of the Church. The most authoritative representatives of N. are: K. F. Fr. Roth, Tholuck, Walch, Thomasius and, more generally, the Faculty of Erlangen.
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