SCHLATTER, ADOLF. - Protestant theologian, among the most influential in recent times, typical for his manner of reconciling criticism with faith, b. 16 Aug. 1852 at St. Gall (Switzerland), d. at Tübingen on 19 May 1938.
His education was influenced by his Pietist father, a minister of the Baptist sect, and by his mother, who 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 toward Jesus. He was a parish priest at Zurich and at Kesswil-Uttwil, on Lake Constance, among colleagues of a liberal and rationalistic stamp. Through the work of Bernese Pietism, which had become influential in the cantonal Diet, he was called (1880) to the University of Bern as a private lecturer in New Testament and then wrote his first book, on the Concept of Faith, fundamental for his wholly original theology. He was then (1888) appointed ordinary professor of systematic theology at Greifswald, at that time a stronghold of believing and Pietist theology in Germany. In the small Pomeranian university town he adhered to a somewhat strident German patriotism. When William 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 disputes of the religious policy of that time. He succeeded in establishing relations of sincere collaboration with the "great master" Harnack (v.). In 1897 he accepted at Tübingen the New Testament chair with the right to give lectures also on dogmatics and ethics: there he carried on an immense literary activity, which at an important point, the exegesis of the Letter to the Romans, stood in open contrast with Luther.
In his doctrine on Revelation he departed from the neo-Kantian and Ritschlian "Christomonism," speaking of the divine in nature as capable of attesting God to us. But in this, in contrast with K. Barth, S. wished to follow the narrow path between that Christomonism and natural theology, casting Greekism out of theology. For this reason he deepened the study of Judaic matters and vindicated the autonomy of biblical concepts with respect to Greek ones. His concept of the Christian is also colored by such ideas, which excludes that in the Church, beyond the unity of faith, a conformity of doctrine should be required, as the system of the "Greek-Roman" Church admits. Already in the title of the important series Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie, which he founded in 1897, explained by him several times, the word "christliche" has the meaning already set forth: the series is open to all orientations of theology, excluding only those that with intellectualism would stifle faith in Jesus; the Holy Spirit breathes in all the other currents, which must progress ever more. With this stance S. has caused, at least indirectly and in part, the ecumenism (v.) today very widespread among Protestants.
Besides the numerous monographs published in the Beiträge, he published among other things: 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., ibid. 1908-10); Einleitung in die Bibel (ibid. 1889, 5th ed., 1933); Gesch. Israels von Alexander bis Hadrian (ibid. 1901, 1906, 1923); Theologie des N. T. (2 vols., ibid. 1909); reworked into: I. Die Gesch. des Christus (ibid. 1920, 1923) and II. Die Theologie der Apostel (ibid. 1922); Die philosoph. Arbeit seit Cartesius (Gütersloh 1906, 1910); Das christliche Dogma (Stuttgart 1911, 1923); Die christliche Ethik (ibid. 1914, 1924, 1929), Hilfe in Bibelnot (2 vols., Essen 1926-27, 2nd ed., vol. I 1928); notable commentaries on the 4 Gospels (Stuttgart 1929; 1935), on James (ibid. 1932), the epistles to the Corinthians (ibid. 1934), to the Romans (ibid. 1935), to Timothy and Titus (ibid. 1936), 1 Peter (ibid. 1937). Besides these great works, cf. the others in R. Brezger, Das Schrifttum A. Schlatters (Gütersloh 1938; Beiträge, 40, 2).