SCHLATTER, ADOLF. – Protestant theologian, among the most influential in recent times, characteristic for his manner of reconciling criticism with faith, b. 16 Aug. 1852 in S. Gallo (Switzerland), d. in Tübingen on 19 May 1938.
His education was influenced by his Pietist father, a minister of the Baptist sect, and by his mother, who had remained in the Swiss Reformed Church, in which he was baptized. He studied at the Universities of Basel and Tübingen and adopted a “realistic” theology that adheres to the central message of the New Testament and judges everything according to love for Jesus. He was pastor in Zurich and in Kesswil-Uttwil, on Lake Constance, among colleagues of liberal and rationalistic stamp. Through Bernese Pietism, which had become influential in the cantonal Diet, he was called (1880) to the University of Bern as a lecturer in the New Testament, and then wrote his first book, on the Concept of Faith, fundamental to his entirely original theology. He was subsequently (1888) appointed professor of systematic theology at Greifswald, then a stronghold of believing and Pietist theology in Germany. In the Pomeranian university town he embraced a somewhat excessive German patriotism. When Wilhelm II, in order to confront the crisis that had arisen after A. Harnack had unleashed the controversy over the Apostles’ Creed, founded (1893) a chair of believing theology at the University of Berlin, S. accepted the delicate chair, which stood at the center of the religious-policy disputes of the time. He succeeded in establishing relations of sincere collaboration with the “great master” HARAN (v.). In 1897 he accepted at Tübingen the chair of New Testament studies, with the right also to lecture on dogmatics and ethics: there he carried out an immense literary activity which, on one important point—the exegesis of the Letter to the Romans—was in open opposition to Luther.
In his doctrine of Revelation he departed from neo-Kantian and Ritschlian “Christomonism,” speaking of the divine in nature as capable of attesting God to us. But in opposition to K. Barth, S. wished to follow the narrow path between that Christomonism and natural theology, casting Greek thought out of theology. He therefore deepened the study of Jewish matters and asserted the autonomy of biblical concepts with respect to Greek ones. His conception of the Christian is likewise colored by these ideas; it excludes the requirement that, in the Church, beyond the unity of faith, there should be conformity of doctrine, as is admitted by the system of the “Greek-Roman” Church. Already in the title of the important series Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie, which he founded in 1897 and explained several times, “christliche” has the meaning already set forth: the series is open to every theological orientation, excluding only those which, through intellectualism, would suffocate faith in Jesus; the Holy Spirit breathes in all the other currents, which must continually progress. Through this position S. caused, at least indirectly and in part, the ecumenism (v.) now widespread among Protestants.
In addition to the numerous monographs published in the Beiträge, he published, among other works: Der Glaube im Neuen Test. (Leiden 1885; Stuttgart 1896; 1905; 1927); a series Das N. Test. ausgelegt für Bibelleser (Stuttgart 1887–1910), summarized in Erläuterungen zum N. T. (3 vols., there 1908–10); Einleitung in die Bibel (there 1889, 5th ed., 1933); Gesch. Israels von Alexander bis Hadrian (there 1901, 1906, 1923); Theologie des N. T. (2 vols., there 1909); revised in: I. Die Gesch. des Christus (there 1920, 1923) and II. Die Theologie der Apostel (there 1922); Die philosoph. Arbeit seit Cartesins (Gütersloh 1906, 1910); Das christliche Dogma (Stuttgart 1911, 1923); Die christliche Ethik (there 1914, 1924, 1929), Hilfe in Bibelnot (2 vols., Essen 1926–27, 2nd ed., vol. I 1928); noteworthy commentaries on the 4 Gospels (Stuttgart 1929; 1935), on James (there 1932), the Epistles to the Corinthians (there 1934), the Romans (there 1935), Timothy and Titus (there 1936), and 1 Peter (there 1937). In addition to these major works, cf. the others in R. Brezger, Das Schrifttum A. Schlotters (Gütersloh 1938; Beiträge, 40, 2).