§ 178.5. The Evangelical League.—At a meeting of the Prussian evangelical middle party in autumn, 1886, certain members, “constrained by grief at the surrender of arms by the Prussian government in the Kulturkampf,” gathered together for private conference, and resolved in defence of the threatened interests of the evangelical church to found an “Evangelical League” out of the various theological and ecclesiastical parties. Prominent party leaders on both sides being admitted, a number of moderate representatives of all schools were invited to a consultative gathering at Erfurt. On January 15th, 1887, a call to join the membership of the league was issued. It was signed by distinguished men of the middle party, such as Beyschlag, Riehm of Halle, etc., moderate representatives of confessionalism and the positive union, such as Kawerau of Kiel, Fricke of Leipzig, Witte, Warneck, etc., and liberal theologians like Lipsius and Nippold of Jena, etc.; and it soon received the addition of about 250 names. It recognised Jesus Christ, as the only begotten Son of God, as the only means of salvation, and professed the fundamental doctrines of the Reformation. It represented the task of the League as twofold: on the one hand the defending at all points the interests of the evangelical church against the advancing pretensions of Rome, and, on the other hand, the strengthening of the communal consciousness of the Christian evangelical church against the cramping influence of party, as well as in opposition to indifferentism and materialism. For the accomplishment of this task the league organized itself under the control of a central board with subordinate branches over all Germany, each having a committee for representing its interests in the press, and with annual general assemblies of all the members for common consultation and promulgating of decrees.
§ 179. Lutheranism, Melanchthonianism, and Calvinism.
Widespread as the favourable reception of the Prussian union had been, there were still a number of Lutheran states in which the Reformed church had scarcely any adherents, e.g. Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein; and the same might be said of the Baltic Provinces and of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Also in Austria, France, and Russia the two denominations kept apart; and in Poland, the union of A.D. 1828 was dissolved in A.D. 1849 (§ [206, 3]). The Lutheran confessional reaction in Prussia afforded stimulus to those who had thus stood apart. In all lands, amid the conflict with rationalism, the confessional spirit both of Lutheran and Reformed became more and more pronounced.
§ 179.1. Lutheranism within the Union.—After the Prussian State church had been undermined by the revolution of A.D. 1848, an unsuccessful attempt was made to have a pure Lutheran confessional church set up in its place. At the October assembly in Berlin, in A.D. 1871, an ineffectual effort was made by the United Lutherans to co-operate with those who were unionists on principle. During the agitation caused by the May Laws (§ [197, 5]) and the Sydow proceedings (§ [180, 4]), the first general evangelical Lutheran conference was held in August, A.D. 1873, in Berlin. It assumed a moderate conciliatory tone toward the union, pronounced the efforts of the “Protestantenverein” (§ [180]) an apostasy from the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, bewailed the issuing of the May Laws, protested against their principles, but acknowledged the duty of obedience, and concluded an address to the emperor with a petition on behalf of a democratic church constitution and civil marriage.—The literary organs of the United Lutherans are the “Evang. Kirchenzeitung,” edited by Hengstenberg, and now by Zöckler, and the “Allgem. konserv. Monatsschrift für die christl. Deutschl.,” by Von Nathusius.
§ 179.2. Lutheranism outside of the Union.—A general Lutheran conference was held under the presidency of Harless, in July, A.D. 1868, at which the sentiments of Kliefoth, denouncing a union under a common church government without agreement about doctrine and sacraments, met with almost universal acceptance. At the Leipzig gathering of A.D. 1870, Luthardt urged the duty of firmly maintaining doctrinal unity in the Lutheran church. The assembly of the following year agreed to recognise the emperor as head of the church only in so far as he did not interfere with the dispensation of word and sacrament, admitted the legality of a merely civil marriage but maintained that despisers of the ecclesiastical ordinance should be subjected to discipline, that communion fellowship is to be allowed neither to Reformed nor unionists if fixed residents, but to unionists faithful to the confession if temporary residents, even without expressly joining their party; and also with reference to the October assembly of the previous year the union of the two Protestant churches of Germany under a mixed system of church government was condemned. The third general conference of Nüremburg [Nuremberg], in A.D. 1879, dealt with the questions: Whether the church should be under State control or free? Whether the schools should be denominational or not? and in both cases decided in favour of the latter alternative.—Its literary organ is Luthardt’s “Allg. Luth. Kirchenzeitung.”
§ 179.3. Melancthonianism [Melanchthonianism] and Calvinism.—The Reformed church of Germany has maintained a position midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism very similar to the later Melanchthonianism. Ebrard indeed sought to prove that strict predestinarianism was only an excrescence of the Reformed system, whereas Schweitzer, purely in the interests of science (§ [182, 9], [16]), has shown that it is its all-conditioning nerve and centre, to which it owes its wonderful vitality, force, and consistency. Heppe of Marburg went still further than Ebrard in his attempt to combine Lutheranism and Calvinism in a Melancthonian [Melanchthonian] church (§ [182, 16]), by seeking to prove that the original evangelical church of Germany was Melanchthonian, that after Luther’s death the fanatics, more Lutheran than Luther, founded the so-called Lutheran church and completed it by issuing the Formula of Concord; that the Calvinizing of the Palatinate, Hesse, Brandenburg, Anhalt was only a reaction against hyper- or pseudo-Lutheranism, and that the restoration of the original Melanchthonianism, and the modern union movement were only the completion of that restoration. Schenkel’s earlier contributions to Reformation history moved in a similar direction. Ebrard also, in A.D. 1851, founded a “Ref. Kirchenzeitung.”—But even the genuine strict Calvinism had zealous adherents during this century, not only in Scotland (§ [202, 7]) and the Netherlands (§ [200, 2]), but also in Germany, especially in the Wupperthal. G. D. Krummacher, from A.D. 1816 pastor in Elberfeld, and his nephew F. W. Krummacher of Barmen, were long its chief representatives. When Prussia sought in A.D. 1835 to force the union in the Wupperthal, and threatened the opposing Reformed pastors with deposition, the revolt here proved almost as serious as that of the Lutherans in Silesia. The pastors, with the majority of their people agreed at last to the union only in so far as it was in accordance with the Reformed mode of worship. But a portion, embracing their most important members, stood apart and refused all conciliation. The royal Toleration Act of A.D. 1847 allowed them to form an independent congregation at Elberfeld with Dr. Kohlbrügge as their minister. This divine, formerly Lutheran pastor at Amsterdam, was driven out owing to a contest with a rationalising colleague, and afterwards, through study of Calvin’s writings, became an ardent Calvinist. This body, under the name of the Dutch Reformed church, constituted the one anti-unionist, strictly Calvinistic denomination in Prussia.—The De Cock movement (§ [200, 2]), out of which in A.D. 1830 the separate “Chr. Ref. Church of Holland” sprang, spread over the German frontiers and led to the founding there of the “Old Ref. Church of East Frisia and Bentheim,” which has now nine congregations and seven pastors.—At the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in A.D. 1873, the Presbyterians present resolved to convoke an œcumenical Reformed council. A conference in London in A.D. 1875 brought to maturity the idea of a Pan-Presbyterian assembly. The council is to meet every third year; the members recognise the supreme authority of the Old and New Testament in matters of faith and practice, and accept the consensus of all the Reformed confessions. The first “General Presbyterian Council” met in Edinburgh from 3rd to 10th July, A.D. 1877, about 300 delegates being present. The proceedings consisted in unmeasured glorification of presbyterianism “drawn from the whole Scripture, from the seventy elders of the Pentateuch to the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse.” The second council met at Philadelphia in A.D. 1880, and boasted that it represented forty millions of Presbyterians. It appointed a committee to draw up a consensus of the confessions of all Reformed churches. The third council of 305 members met at Belfast in A.D. 1884, and after a long debate declined, by a great majority, to adopt a strictly formulated consensus of doctrine as uncalled for and undesirable, and by the reception of the Cumberland Presbyterians they even surrendered the Westminster Confession (§ [155, 1]) as the only symbol qualifying for membership of the council. The fourth council met in London in A.D. 1887.—An œcumenical Methodist congress was held in London in A.D. 1881, attended by 400 delegates.
§ 180. The “Protestantenverein.”
Rationalists of all descriptions, adherents of Baur’s school, as well as disciples of Hegel and Schleiermacher of the left wing, kept far off from every evangelical union. But the common negation of the tendencies characterizing the evangelical confederations and the common endeavour after a free, democratic, non-confessional organization of the German Protestant church, awakened in them a sense of the need of combination and co-operation. While in North Germany this feeling was powerfully expressed from A.D. 1854, in the able literary organ the “Protest. Kirchenzeitung,” in South Germany, with Heidelberg as a centre and Dean Zittel as chief agitator, local “Protestantenvereine” were formed, which combined in a united organization in the Assembly of Frankfort, A.D. 1863. After long debates the northern and southern societies were joined in one. In June, A.D. 1865, the first general Protestant assembly was held at Eisenach, and the nature, motive, and end of the associations were defined. To these assemblies convened from year to year members of the society crowded from all parts of Germany in order to encourage one another to persevere in spreading their views by word and pen, and to take steps towards the founding of branch associations for disseminating among the people a Christianity which renounces the miraculous and sets aside the doctrines of the church.
§ 180.1. The Protestant Assembly.—The first general German Protestant Assembly, composed of 400 clerical and lay notabilities, met at Eisenach in A.D. 1865, under the presidency of the jurist Bluntschli of Heidelberg and the chief court preacher Schwarz of Gotha. A peculiar lustre was given to the meeting by the presence of Rothe of Heidelberg. Of special importance was Schwarz’s address on “The Limits of Doctrinal Freedom in Protestantism,” which he sought not in the confession, not in the authority of the letter of Scripture, not even in certain so called fundamental articles, but in the one religious moral truth of Christianity, the gospel of love and the divine fatherhood as Christ taught it, expounded it in his life and sealed it by his death. In Berlin, Osnabrück, and Leipzig, the churches were refused for services according to the Protestantenverein. In A.D. 1868 fifteen heads of families in Heidelberg petitioned the ecclesiastical council to grant them the use of one of the city churches where a believing clergyman might conduct service in the old orthodox fashion. This request was refused by fifty votes against four. Baumgarten denounced this intolerance, and declared that unless repudiated by the union it would be a most serious stain upon its reputation. In A.D. 1877 he publicly withdrew from the society.
§ 180.2. The “Protestantenverein” Propaganda.—The views of the union were spread by popular lectures and articles in newspapers and magazines. The “Protestanten-Bibel,” edited by Schmidt and Holtzendorff in A.D. 1872, of which an English translation has been published, giving the results of New Testament criticism, “laid the axe at the root of the dogmatics and confessionalism,” and proved that “we are still Christians though our conception of Christianity diverges in many points from that of the second century, and we proclaim a Christianity without miracles and in accordance with the modern theory of the universe.” The success of such efforts to spread the broad theology has been greatly over-estimated. Enthusiastic partisans of the union claimed to have the whole evangelical world at their back, while Holtzendorff boasted that they had all thoughtful Germans with them.