A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation

Albrecht Ritschl — A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, translated from the German with the author’s sanction by John S. Black (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872).

The first, historical volume of Ritschl’s Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (1870), the companion of the constructive third volume. Ritschl traces how the Church has understood the saving work of Christ: from Anselm and Abelard, through Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus and the mediaeval idea of justification, to the Reformers’ principle of justification by faith and their doctrine of reconciliation set against Osiander’s; then the orthodox Lutheran and Calvinist systems and the Socinian controversy, their disintegration under the theologians of the Illumination, Kant’s restatement of the problem, Schleiermacher and his followers, Pietism and the revived Lutheran orthodoxy, and the speculative school of Schelling, Hegel and their successors.

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Contents (14)

1. Author’s Preface
2. Prefatory Note by the Translator
3. Introduction
4. Chapter I. The Idea of Reconciliation Through Christ According to Anselm and Abelard
5. Chapter II. The Ideas of Christ’s Satisfaction and Merit According to Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus
6. Chapter III. The Mediæval Idea of Justification
7. Chapter IV. The Reformation Principle of Justification by Faith in Christ
8. Chapter V. The Reformation Doctrine of Reconciliation Contrasted in Its Principles with That of the Middle Ages and with Osiander’s Doctrine of Justification
9. Chapter VI. The Orthodox Doctrine of Reconciliation and Justification as Held by Lutherans and Calvinists, and the Socinian Controversy
10. Chapter VII. The Entire Disintegration of the Doctrines of Reconciliation and Justification by the German Theologians of the Illumination
11. Chapter VIII. The Problem of Reconciliation Defined Anew by Kant—Regress of His Disciples to the Standpoint of the Illumination
12. Chapter IX. The Revival of Abelard’s Type of Doctrine by Schleiermacher and His Followers
13. Chapter X. The Course of Pietism till the Repristination of Lutheran Orthodoxy
14. Chapter XI. The Idea of Reconciliation According to the Speculative School