Search results for ""Author Kevin M. Vander Schel""

Questions surrounding the genesis, development, and viability of modern academic theology have drawn renewed and heightened interest in recent years. Over the past decade, an increasing number of detailed studies have inquired into the emergence of scientific theology ( wissenschaftliche Theologie ) in the nineteenth century and its uneasy relationship with the shifting intellectual culture of the modern research university. This volume presents a unique contribution to this developing conversation, offering a focused treatment of the many-sided debate surrounding the tasks and limitations of historical and critical theology as it develops in the modern German university during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The fifteen chapters of the volume examine the challenges of the historical study of theology and the contested concept of scientific theology in the writings of foundational figures such as Kant, Schleiermacher, Baur, Ritschl, Harnack, Troeltsch, Barth, and Bonhoeffer. Yet it also attends to ongoing debates concerning the relationship between supernatural revelation and empirical-historical research, the rise and fall of historicism in theology, the competing locales of church and university, the appropriation of historical methods within Protestant and Catholic theological faculties, and the place and function of theology in the increasingly specialized modern research university. As the essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary discussions of the place of the study of theology and religion in the modern university.

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From the closing decades of the eighteenth century, German theology has been a major intellectual force within modern western thought, closely connected to important developments in idealism, romanticism, historicism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Despite its influential legacy, however, no recent attempts have sought to offer an overview of its history and development. Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848, the first of a three-volume series, provides the most comprehensive multi-authored overview of German theology from the period from 1781-1848. Kaplan and Vander Schel cover categories frequently omitted from earlier overviews of the time period, such as the place of Judaism in modern German society, race and religion, and the impact of social history in shaping theological debate. Rather than focusing on individual figures alone, Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848 describes the narrative arc of the period by focusing on broader intellectual and cultural movements, ongoing debates, and significant events. It furthermore provides a historical introduction to each of the chronological subsections that divides the book. Moreover, unlike previous efforts to introduce this time period and geographical region, the volume offers chapters covering such previously neglected topics as religious orders, the influence of Romantic art, secularism, religious freedom, and important but overlooked scholarly initiatives such as the Corpus Reformatorum. Attention to such matters will make this volume an invaluable repository of scholarship and knowledge and an indispensable reference resource for decades to come.

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