Symbolum Nitzschenum

”Kristendomens idéhistoria: från medeltiden till vår tid” is a book in Swedish by Austrian expatriate Aleksander Radler. The author was revealed to be a Stasi informer some years ago, and forced to leave all his political and religious offices (he was a Christian Democrat and an ordained priest in the Church of Sweden). This is outside the scope of my review, but for obvious reasons, I have to point it out…

Radler´s book is a huge volume about the history of theology from Augustinus to Karl Barth, with an obvious emphasis on German-speaking theologians. Protestantism is more extensively covered than Catholicism, and Orthodoxy is hardly even mentioned. Some anti-religious thinkers and higher critics have been included, such as D F Strauss or the Pan-Babylonians, since they influenced the theological debates. Likewise, some philosophers who influenced theology are covered: Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Nietzsche. Interestingly, Radler has penned a lengthy chapter on Jakob Böhme and also exposits on Master Eckhart and Valentin Weigel. Disappointingly, Franz von Baader is mentioned mostly in passing.

However, the bulk of the book deals with ”all the usual people”:  Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Schleiermacher, the various Pietist currents, the Oxford Movement, Ritschl, Troeltsch, Harnack, Barth, und so weiter. Since the book is Swedish, important Swedish and Danish theologians have been included (think Anders Nygren or Grundtvig). The style is rather heavy and in-house, and often presupposes some background knowledge of the thinkers covered. No hard feelings – this is obviously a tome for the advanced theology student! Radler´s own opinions on theological matters is difficult to fathom from the material, but here and there a conservative political outlook is visible, as when he implicitly supports the Holy Alliance. This may explain why the book never mentions feminist or liberation theology, to take two examples of more radical causes.

I got some sympathy for the quip ”theology – is that even a subject?” after reading Radler´s work. To a modern observer, the never-ending controversies between different Protestant factions with exotic names such as Philippists and Gnesiolutherans sound like much ado over nothing (or something impossible to really ”prove”) and I sometimes wonder how much of a headache the poor German princes got from listening to these leading lights – the rulers, after all, had to ”solve” the theological disputes according to the principle ”cuius regio, eius religio”. (Had I been a Holy Roman princeling, I would have been tempted to impose Hoodoo on my regio, just to make a point.) 

I got my first immersion in the strange thought of Böhme from this book. I admit I was appalled. Böhme sounds ”seriously stoned”, to be somewhat diplomatic. But then, Zinzendorf´s "time of sifting" was probably even worse! I laughed when I read that one Karl Immanuel Nitzsch was once considered to be the greatest theologian who ever lived, ”greater than even Schleiermacher”. Today, nobody has heard of him and even his John the Precursor (Schleiermacher, remember?) has probably fallen on posthumously bad times. Another strange factoid: yes, the confessionalist Lutherans really did believe that *all* of Scripture was inspired by the Holy Ghost, including the Hebrew vowel marks?! Ahem, there were no vowel marks in the original manuscripts…

Although ”Kristendomens idéhistoria” is rather heavy, I have from time to time used it as a resource, and I think you will too, provided you are interested in the topics covered and/or plan to take over some obscure German principality…