SCHELL, HERMANN. - Catholic theologian and apologist, b. 28 Feb. 1850 at Freiburg (Baden), d. 31 May 1906 at Würzburg. He studied theology at Freiburg and in Rome, philosophy at Würzburg, where he heard F. Brentano. In 1884 he was called to the Faculty of Theology of Würzburg to succeed F. X. Hettinger (v.) as professor of apologetics and of the history of Christian art.
He set himself the task of a modern apology for Christianity, especially in the face of idealism (v.), monism (v.) and historicism (v.). In realizing his intentions he was unable to find agreement between his philosophical conceptions, influenced by modern currents, and the teaching of the Church. His theology of the Most Holy Trinity, his interpretation of the "Kenosis" of Christ and his eschatology contain erroneous and dangerous propositions. The office of rector magnificus of the University of Würzburg, to which he was elected in 1896, gave him the occasion to set out his ideas regarding the cultural problems of German Catholicism and to invite Catholics to a new orientation of their attitude toward the cultural ideals of the time. His two "reforming" writings Der Katholizismus als Prinzip des Fortschritts (Würzburg 1897) and Die neue Zeit und der alte Glaube (Paderborn 1898) provoked a heated controversy; by decree of 15 Dec. 1898 the two works, together with the Katholische Dogmatik (4 vols., ibid. 1889-93) and Gott und Geist (2 vols., ibid. 1895-96), were placed on the Index. S. submitted and bound himself, before his own bishop, not to uphold in his teaching the errors pointed out. After S.'s death the controversies flared up again when his friends promoted the project of a monument. Pope Pius X, by apostolic letter of 14 June 1907 to Msgr. E. Commer, while acknowledging S.'s zeal and integrity of life, insisted on the decision of the Sacred Congregation of the Index of 1898.
The orientation and the methodological principles of S.'s apologetics are substantially in agreement with traditional doctrine. S. defends the possibility and the value of metaphysics against empiricism (v.) and criticism (v.). He does not reject the moral-psychological claims of the apologists of immanence (L. Ollé-Laprune, M. Blondel); but he maintains that they can attain probative value only on the basis of the principles of metaphysics and within the framework of an intellectualist philosophy. Against the relativism of students of comparative religion he defends the doctrine of faith as revealed truth, demonstrating the greatness and uniqueness of the biblical conception of God and explaining the history of the chosen people as the unfolding of a communicative presence of God that culminates in the Incarnation of the Word.
S. was a theologian of notable speculative force who, as a consequence of his apologetic tendencies, of the influence of the theological school of Tübingen and, indirectly, of German idealism, was inclined to set out and interpret the doctrine of faith in such a way as to confer on it the logical structure of a philosophical system. The basis of his speculative thought consists in a metaphysical conception that, like Neoplatonic philosophy before it, seeks to reconcile Aristotelian ontology with a dynamicist spiritualism. The aseity of God means not only the exclusion of every form of dependence in being, but also self-actualization and self-positing (positive aseity); God is "ratio et causa sui" (Kath. Dogmatik, I, p. 238 ff.). The Trinity of the divine persons is the expression of this perfect actuality; "the Trinity is the aseity of the living God, explained by Revelation" (ibid., II, p. 21). S. did not succeed in convincingly eliminating the grave difficulties and the dangerous implications of this theory; it in fact arrives at the consequence that God realizes, in the Trinitarian productions, the aseity of his nature and that the distinction of the persons in God is reduced to the diversity of moments and aspects of a single process.
The actualistic conception of the person makes itself felt also in the definition of mortal sin and in the explanation of eternal punishments. Damnation is thinkable, according to S., only as the consequence of a free and willed hardening that is total and definitive for the will of man himself. A mortal sin therefore supposes that the subject, by an act springing from the center of his spiritual nature, decides and rebels formally and explicitly against God himself. If the will acts under the influence of passionate impulses, it does not decide with the perfect freedom that alone can establish man as an enemy of God and fix him in an absolute obstinacy toward Grace. For the sinner who has not voluntarily hardened himself there remains, according to S., even after death the possibility of repenting and of purifying himself of his sins (ibid., III, II, pp. 721 ff., 879 ff.). These opinions, with which S. placed himself in evident contrast with the doctrine of the Church (cf., for example, Council of Trent, sess. VI, chap. 15), seem to derive from an unjustified identification of the formal denial of God with the explicit one and, moreover, to confuse the conditions of its totality with those of its definitiveness.
Other principal works: Das Wirken des dreieinigen Gottes (Mainz 1885); Apologie des Christentums, I: Religion und Offenbarung (ibid. 1901, 3rd ed. 1907), II: Jahre und Christus (ibid. 1905, 2nd ed. 1908); Christus, Das Evangelium in seiner weltgeschichtlichen Bedeutung (Mainz 1903); S.: kleinere Schriften, ed. C. Hennemann (Paderborn 1908).
Bibliography
Pesch, Das kirchl. Lehramt und die Freiheit der theolog. Wissenschaft, in Theol. Zeitschr., Freiburg 1900, pp. 3-66; J. Stufler, Die Heiligheit Gottes und der ewige Tod, Innsbruck 1903; E. Commer, S. und der fortschrittl. Katholizismus, Vienna 1907; id., Die jüngste Phase des Schellstreites, ibid. 1909; Chr. Pesch, Das Ende des Schellstreites, in Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 73 (1907), pp. 546-61. On S.: O. Braun, Die Entwicklung des Gottesbegriffs bei S., in Zeitschr. für Philos. u. philos. Kritik, 13 (1907), pp. 113-41; P. Godet, Un apologiste contemporain, in Rev. du clergé franç., 54 (1908), pp. 5-30; J. Koch, Die Erkenntnistlehre H. S., in Philos. Jahrb., 29 (1916), pp. 1-35; id., H. S. und F. Brentano, in Philosophia perennis, Regensburg 1930, pp. 337-48; A. Kálmán, Die Ontologie bei A. S., diss., Bonn 1933; E. Hocdez, Hist. de la théol. au XIXe siècle, III, Brussels 1947, pp. 172-79.