00:00.000 --> 00:08.480 Dear colleagues, students, friends of the Faculty of Theology, it is an honor and a 00:08.480 --> 00:13.440 privilege for me as the Dean of this Faculty to heartily welcome you, Professor Christoph 00:13.440 --> 00:16.480 Markschies, to our Faculty today. 00:16.480 --> 00:20.280 We are also grateful for the presence of Mrs. Markschies. 00:20.280 --> 00:25.280 We regard already both of you as friends and family. 00:26.000 --> 00:33.120 Still, Professor Markschies, today you do not come to this Faculty anymore as a guest. 00:33.120 --> 00:39.680 You come as one of the colleagues, a Faculty member, Dr. Honoris Causa, since yesterday's 00:39.680 --> 00:42.320 solemn ceremony. 00:42.320 --> 00:46.480 I congratulate you on behalf of the whole Faculty. 00:46.480 --> 00:53.120 We are deeply honored that you accepted the nomination and we do look forward to cooperate 00:53.200 --> 00:57.760 with you in many ways in the years to come. 00:57.760 --> 01:04.000 Many colleagues know you already as an extremely competent Church historian in the period of 01:04.000 --> 01:06.080 early Christianity. 01:06.080 --> 01:13.080 I have met you several times, also as President of the Humboldt University until last year, 01:13.080 --> 01:18.680 and all of us have expectations to meet the polyhistor of the contemporary Berlin, a city 01:18.720 --> 01:23.080 Norwegians tend to love and admire. 01:23.080 --> 01:29.240 Christoph Markschies was born in Jena in 1961. 01:29.240 --> 01:36.040 In 1992, he was appointed Professor in Church History in Jena, some years after in Heidelberg, 01:36.040 --> 01:40.840 and since 2004 at the Humboldt University in Berlin. 01:40.840 --> 01:49.120 He was, as we all know, President at the Humboldt University from 2006 to 2010. 01:49.120 --> 01:54.440 Professor Markschies is a member of many Akademie der Wissenschaften and is a member of the 01:54.440 --> 01:59.480 Board in the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. 01:59.480 --> 02:06.640 You have already seen the exhibition of some of the works from Professor Markschies, and 02:06.640 --> 02:13.480 I just want to mention four of them and show it to all of you, but more of the books is 02:13.480 --> 02:16.720 on the bookstore back. 02:16.720 --> 02:23.480 This is Valentinus Gnosticus, Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar 02:23.480 --> 02:30.480 zu den Fragmenten Valentins, Tübingen, 1992. 02:30.480 --> 02:35.440 Ambrosius von Mailand und die Trinitätstheologie, Kirchen und Theologie, geschichtliche Studien 02:35.440 --> 02:49.440 zur Antianismus und Neuanismus bei Ambrosius und im lateinischen Westen, Tübingen, 1995. 02:49.440 --> 02:54.920 Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen, Prolegomen, also eine 02:54.920 --> 03:00.800 Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie, Tübingen, 2007. 03:00.800 --> 03:11.360 And then, just to mention one of the more books for the public, Between Two Worlds, 03:11.360 --> 03:17.720 Structures of Earliest Christianity, from 19… 03:17.720 --> 03:26.160 So Professor Markschies has a publication list of both specialized and competent studies 03:26.320 --> 03:32.040 and is also expanding to contemporary comments and also books for students. 03:32.040 --> 03:37.800 So it's a very impressive list of publications that you can present to us. 03:37.800 --> 03:43.400 As we heard yesterday, Professor Markschies has also participated in an interdisciplinary 03:43.400 --> 03:50.400 project on baptism, shared by two of our colleagues, Erwin Nordewall and David Hellam, among others. 03:50.720 --> 03:55.960 He is also a member of the advisory board of the interfacultary area, plural, here at 03:55.960 --> 04:03.360 the university and, as mentioned yesterday, the founding father of the faculty's exhibition 04:03.360 --> 04:11.280 of its 200 years historic responsibility for theology in the University of Oslo. 04:11.280 --> 04:19.920 Together with some of the Norwegian colleagues, you met us in one of the trendy cafes near 04:19.920 --> 04:26.160 the faculty in Berlin, between the busy meetings as a president and an obvious lecture on Thomas 04:26.160 --> 04:30.360 Aquinas in the faculty some years ago. 04:30.360 --> 04:35.840 Between the cappuccinos and the cakes, you suddenly said to us, why don't you construct 04:35.840 --> 04:37.980 an exhibition? 04:37.980 --> 04:44.540 And so we did, of course, and that was more than easy and very cheap. 04:44.540 --> 04:51.620 So we thank you therefore, also for the opportunity to participate with you in the Humboldt celebration 04:51.620 --> 04:57.300 of last year and look forward to hear your lecture as Dr. Honoris Causa. 04:57.300 --> 05:01.500 Professor Markschies, the word and the floor are yours. 05:01.500 --> 05:11.300 Thank you. 05:11.300 --> 05:16.500 Thank you very much for the kind, far too kind introduction. 05:16.500 --> 05:25.020 And I'm so deeply honored and moved by the ceremony yesterday and by the great honor 05:25.020 --> 05:26.660 you have given to me. 05:26.660 --> 05:33.740 So the best thing is to start with a lecture and not to stay here and to try to express 05:33.740 --> 05:37.620 what is moving at the moment me. 05:37.620 --> 05:45.540 Dear Dean Willer, dear colleagues, dear students, dear friends of the faculty, a patristic scholar 05:45.540 --> 05:53.160 taking the floor to talk about Protestant traditions in a multicultural future, doubtless 05:53.160 --> 05:57.000 involved a significant risk. 05:57.000 --> 06:02.640 Even talking about the present can be a little tricky. 06:02.640 --> 06:09.600 For church historians themselves are very rarely aware of how strongly their historical 06:09.600 --> 06:14.560 analysis are determined by the immediate present. 06:14.560 --> 06:21.200 Other people usually notice this much sooner than the church historians themselves. 06:21.200 --> 06:29.400 When they read what has been written or hear what is said by church historians. 06:29.400 --> 06:38.120 I myself noticed this as a student years ago at the famous lectures of the Heidelberg-based 06:38.120 --> 06:45.440 patristic scholar Hans Freyherr von Kampenhausen on the Greek and Latin church fathers. 06:45.440 --> 06:51.920 These lectures were published soon afterwards also belonged, as I was told, to the standard 06:51.920 --> 06:57.600 works for all students at the theological faculties of Scandinavia, probably during 06:57.600 --> 06:58.600 the last decades. 06:58.600 --> 07:03.920 I'm not quite sure whether until now. 07:03.920 --> 07:11.480 Writing from a slightly revivalist Baltic Lutheran perspective, Kampenhausen, who was 07:11.480 --> 07:20.320 born in the Baltic region, gave his church fathers marks according to their Lutheranism. 07:20.320 --> 07:30.720 Tertullian comes off badly, of course, and is portrayed as a rabid, legally-minded moralist. 07:30.720 --> 07:38.800 Augustine, by contrast, does far better as the protagonist of a rediscovery of the Apostle 07:38.800 --> 07:41.440 Paul and his theology. 07:41.440 --> 07:50.760 And the neoplatonic bishop, Synasius of Cyrene, is simply liked, far from all dogma-based 07:50.760 --> 07:57.680 judgments, mysteriously, yet very understandably. 07:57.680 --> 08:05.960 If it is already difficult for church historians to shrewdly diagnose in detail how directly 08:05.960 --> 08:12.800 related their work is to the present, it is even a greater risk for a historian to 08:12.800 --> 08:17.000 speak not of the past but of the future. 08:17.000 --> 08:25.400 And dear colleagues of the faculty, dear students, dear friends, it is also a risk for your faculty 08:25.400 --> 08:34.360 to entrust yesterday's honoree by way of exception with a task of speaking not about the past 08:34.400 --> 08:38.240 but about the future. 08:38.240 --> 08:45.320 For it could be that such an attempt will document limits of his erudition so kindly 08:45.320 --> 08:51.480 extolled by you, and you might be irritated by these limits. 08:51.480 --> 09:00.840 But someone who, like me, is so deeply grateful to you for awarding him an honorary doctorate 09:00.920 --> 09:08.600 regards the difficult subject as a challenge and will at least try to deliver a small thank 09:08.600 --> 09:13.960 offering for an infinitively large gift. 09:13.960 --> 09:20.240 And this little thank offering begins with a very simple reflection on historians and 09:20.240 --> 09:24.400 their relationship to the past and the future. 09:24.440 --> 09:32.440 A very simple reflection with a justifying intention with the aim of answering for, at 09:32.440 --> 09:39.280 least to some extent, the hazardous adventure of my lecture. 09:39.280 --> 09:47.360 Anyone who, as a church historian, has never experienced the fire of criticism of Friedrich 09:47.360 --> 09:53.640 Nietzsche or a Franz Overbeck will not even understand the importance of the immediate 09:53.640 --> 09:57.440 present for the reconstruction of the past. 09:57.440 --> 10:05.120 Anyone who has never read the provocations of such French deconstructivist historiographers 10:05.120 --> 10:13.000 as Michel de Certeau will certainly not understand that a church historian also consistently 10:13.000 --> 10:16.000 has to deal with the future. 10:16.000 --> 10:26.800 Therefore, de Certeau says, an event is not what we can see of it or know of it, but what 10:26.800 --> 10:28.880 it will become. 10:28.880 --> 10:31.080 It is primarily for us. 10:31.080 --> 10:41.480 I repeat, an event is not what we can see of it or know of it, but what will become 10:41.480 --> 10:44.560 it is primarily for us. 10:44.560 --> 10:53.120 In other words, the historian, deeply influenced by his present, designs a meaning for an event 10:53.120 --> 10:57.120 of the past with a view to the future. 10:57.120 --> 11:06.080 The historian, as Certeau once said, almost de-respectfully, stirs up the formal and past 11:06.080 --> 11:14.440 world, brings silent letters to life, resurrects long since dead conflicts, and drags those 11:14.440 --> 11:21.800 who by now exist only as dark shadows into the bright light, but not only for the moment 11:21.800 --> 11:26.280 of the immediate present, in the process of writing. 11:26.280 --> 11:33.720 No, the historian drafts with a view to the future, to the future of those who read his 11:33.720 --> 11:41.000 analysis, to the future of the reception of his conceptions of history. 11:41.080 --> 11:49.640 Whether he likes it or not, he is a creator, an image and likeness of God, but usually 11:49.640 --> 11:59.080 a sinful image, because he is completely unaware, in most cases, completely unaware of the dangers 11:59.080 --> 12:07.280 of his creative power over the past, is not humble in the way he deals with the immense 12:07.280 --> 12:16.560 ability of being able to revive what is dead and being allowed to shape the future. 12:16.560 --> 12:22.600 You have guessed it, dear colleagues, students, and friends, you have guessed it, I have almost 12:22.600 --> 12:29.760 arrived, the actual topic of this honorary lecture, the Protestant traditions, when I'm 12:29.760 --> 12:38.480 philosophizing in this way on the profound sin and the glorious freedom of the historian, 12:38.480 --> 12:44.360 and yet we are still in the middle of my preliminary remarks. 12:44.360 --> 12:51.760 And still with a risk mentioned at the beginning, that is taken by a historian who, rather than 12:51.760 --> 12:58.680 sticking with what he knows in talking about the past, now suddenly starts talking about 12:58.680 --> 13:00.400 the future. 13:00.400 --> 13:07.320 The real risk of such a lecture is therefore not that by talking about the future he does 13:07.320 --> 13:11.520 something that is altogether unusual for him. 13:11.520 --> 13:19.880 No, the risk lies in the fact that it now becomes clear how little this dimension of 13:19.880 --> 13:28.200 historiographical work is actually considered in the historian's everyday work, and probably 13:28.200 --> 13:35.320 even less so in the everyday work of church historians, who at least in Germany are pretty 13:35.320 --> 13:43.560 tired when it comes to theoretical reflection, notable exceptions aside. 13:43.560 --> 13:51.320 An initial dimension of the Protestant traditions in a multicultural future, which you, dear 13:51.320 --> 14:00.160 Dean, have asked me to talk about, is therefore perhaps somewhat unexpected, comes across 14:00.160 --> 14:03.440 as somewhat self-referential. 14:03.440 --> 14:07.980 Church history is taught at a Protestant faculty. 14:07.980 --> 14:15.240 It is still mostly influenced or even determined at least in some way or other by Protestant 14:15.240 --> 14:17.360 traditions. 14:17.400 --> 14:24.960 Church history is a contribution to the continuation of the Protestant tradition in a multicultural 14:24.960 --> 14:32.360 future, when it is drafted with a view to the multicultural future. 14:32.360 --> 14:39.920 I have again and again pleaded against de-theologizing church history. 14:39.920 --> 14:49.720 I have pleaded against too quickly deleting the theological principles behind the theory of church history. 14:49.720 --> 14:56.400 As the last great expert on historical method in my guild, the late Leipzig-based colleague 14:56.400 --> 15:03.240 Kurt Nowak proposed, there are good reasons for my argument, which I would not like to 15:03.240 --> 15:05.000 repeat today. 15:05.080 --> 15:12.680 I still dream of one day submitting a book that I would like, if I dare, to call Theological 15:12.680 --> 15:16.360 Historics, Theologische Historik. 15:16.360 --> 15:23.080 However, the title of the honorary lecture I've been invited to give allows me to add 15:23.080 --> 15:30.880 another reason for theological historics to the ones I have already mentioned. 15:30.880 --> 15:39.440 Any church historian who, like Nowak, wanted to denounce a re-theologization of church 15:39.440 --> 15:45.720 history as a, I quote, weak interpretation of history, the formulation of contents of 15:45.720 --> 15:52.440 history in favor of their own social group, end of quote, would not only overlook that, 15:52.440 --> 15:58.320 for the historian, all events are primarily what they become for himself and his loved 15:58.360 --> 16:02.120 ones, to quote de Sarto again. 16:02.120 --> 16:09.200 The great rankest passion for objectivity in the famous and well-known passage, how 16:09.200 --> 16:17.560 it actually was, wie es eigentlich gewesen, is broken with strange irony, as Adolf von 16:17.560 --> 16:22.800 Harnack once subtly remarked. 16:22.800 --> 16:29.720 No historian writes in a way that keeps a strict distance from any orientation towards 16:29.720 --> 16:32.200 his own social group. 16:32.200 --> 16:35.920 And of course, Nowak did not either. 16:35.920 --> 16:44.560 Nevertheless, anyone who successfully eliminated the theological dimensions of his work would 16:44.560 --> 16:52.840 also automatically deprive himself of the possibility of expelling Protestant traditions 16:52.840 --> 17:00.080 into a multicultural future, and thus making a perhaps unintentional contribution to the 17:00.080 --> 17:03.440 de-Christianization of Europe. 17:03.440 --> 17:09.720 Nowak described the way in which most of his colleagues wrote church history with a touch 17:09.800 --> 17:15.360 of irony as, I quote, pragmatic church historiography. 17:15.360 --> 17:22.800 He's referring to a historiography that proceeds in a purely pragmatic manner and avoids any 17:22.800 --> 17:30.800 decision in favor of either re-theologization or de-theologization. 17:30.800 --> 17:39.680 To phrase it with provocative clarity, a church historian who choose de-theologization 17:39.680 --> 17:46.640 and a pragmatic church historian who tries to circumvent this decision both take church 17:46.640 --> 17:53.120 history out of the group of theological disciplines that think about the Protestant traditions 17:53.120 --> 18:00.600 in a multicultural future and make their contribution to their preservation. 18:01.000 --> 18:07.800 Before I move on to a second dimension of the title you have asked me to talk about, 18:07.800 --> 18:14.480 I should perhaps explain what it precisely means to contribute to the preservation of 18:14.480 --> 18:21.080 Protestant traditions as church historian, especially as a church historian who deals 18:21.080 --> 18:23.520 with Christian antiquity. 18:23.520 --> 18:30.120 For the Protestant traditions can surely no longer be preserved in the same way as the 18:30.120 --> 18:37.160 great von Kampenhausen did, so that we understand patristics in the same way as the Lutheran 18:37.160 --> 18:44.520 Baroque theologian Johann Gerhard, who taught long ago in Jena, did in his posthumously 18:44.520 --> 18:53.520 published Patrologia of 1653, rating the patries according to whether they were good Lutherans 18:53.520 --> 18:55.600 or not. 18:55.600 --> 19:04.960 Of course, that would mean making or assessing the past from the perspective of the present, 19:04.960 --> 19:12.360 not stirring up it and bringing it to life, but reburying what has just been brought to 19:12.360 --> 19:19.520 life, to vary the images of Michel de Certeau that we quoted earlier. 19:19.520 --> 19:23.960 But how then, if not thus? 19:23.960 --> 19:30.720 I sometimes like to explain how I imagine using church historiography to look after 19:30.720 --> 19:38.840 Protestant traditions with an example from my very own special field, the church history 19:38.840 --> 19:41.400 of ancient Christianity. 19:41.400 --> 19:49.920 The well-reputed in Germany, very well-reputed philosopher called Flush once said in a conversation 19:49.960 --> 19:56.840 that as a historian, and especially as a church historian, one must choose. 19:56.840 --> 20:00.780 One must choose between Augustine and Origen. 20:00.780 --> 20:07.280 One could not deal both with a pitch-black anthropology of the Bishop of Hippo and with 20:07.280 --> 20:14.200 an anthropology originated to glorious freedom of the professor from Alexandria and Caesarea 20:14.200 --> 20:19.120 with the same sober and aloof attitude. 20:19.320 --> 20:25.880 Anyone who knows relevant publications by Flush knows the decision taken by the historian 20:25.880 --> 20:29.040 of philosophy himself. 20:29.040 --> 20:36.120 Flush calls the mature Augustine's doctrine of predestination and the related radical 20:36.120 --> 20:46.000 Pauline anthropology, I quote, stone in the kidneys of ancient Europe, a sign of radical 20:46.000 --> 20:54.480 darkening of bright classical antiquity, a theory that stands at the beginning of a 20:54.480 --> 20:58.680 history of violence in Christianity. 20:58.680 --> 21:07.000 It is not difficult to imagine what he thinks about Origen's anti-predestination anthropology, 21:07.000 --> 21:14.240 which attaches great importance to the highly self-directed development of each individual 21:14.280 --> 21:21.520 into reasonably acting, fully developed being, despite its emphasis on the gracious gift 21:21.520 --> 21:23.680 of the spirit. 21:23.680 --> 21:32.720 I once contradicted Flush, albeit differently than he expected. 21:32.720 --> 21:40.320 Flush probably assumed that in view of the need seen by Flush to choose one of the two 21:40.400 --> 21:46.640 highly conflicting anthropologies, I, as a Protestant church historian, would vote 21:46.640 --> 21:53.680 for the highly Pauline Augustine, from whom so many lines are known to lead to Martin 21:53.680 --> 21:58.000 Luther and the reformation he so dominated. 21:58.000 --> 22:05.440 Luther was an Augustinian hermit and joined this order in 1505 beneath the magnificent 22:05.520 --> 22:11.920 stained glass pictures of the Augustinian church in Erfurt, which to this day shows 22:11.920 --> 22:16.000 scenes from the lives of St. Augustine. 22:16.000 --> 22:22.400 The patron of the young theological faculty in Wittenberg, to which Luther belonged first 22:22.400 --> 22:29.280 in 1508 and then permanently after 1511, was the Bishop of Hippo. 22:29.360 --> 22:36.240 The deep impression made by Augustinian theology on the reformer theology need not to be explained 22:36.240 --> 22:37.840 here. 22:37.840 --> 22:45.040 On the other hand, what Luther thought of Origen is expressed in a sentence taken from 22:45.040 --> 22:54.000 his dinner speeches, probably spoken in 1532, in Toto Origine, known as Verbum Unum Dei 22:54.000 --> 22:55.840 Christo. 22:55.920 --> 23:02.160 Origen's work does not contain a single word about Christ. 23:02.160 --> 23:09.360 When I advocate that Protestant church history should maintain and care for Protestant traditions 23:09.360 --> 23:16.960 for the multicultural Europe, to quote Sertow again, that it should stir it up, bring it 23:16.960 --> 23:24.560 to life, and design it with a view to the future, I do not mean that we should repristinate 23:24.640 --> 23:32.960 the historical and historiographical assessments of the reformers. 23:32.960 --> 23:41.760 It is like Luther, praise Augustine and criticize Origen, or like Flush in an iconoclastic attitude 23:41.760 --> 23:48.400 against one's own tradition, that one should praise Origen and criticize Augustine. 23:48.480 --> 23:56.400 I mean, if I vote for preserving tradition, I shall vote for a creative way of dealing 23:56.400 --> 23:58.080 with tradition. 23:58.080 --> 24:04.960 I therefore rather surprised Flush by replying that a Protestant church historiography in 24:04.960 --> 24:14.560 particular has the glorious freedom to treat both theological anthropologies with equal 24:15.280 --> 24:21.200 care, the glorious freedom to deal both with equal care. 24:21.200 --> 24:29.360 For of course, reformatory theology of Lutheran provenance on the one hand adapts the black 24:29.360 --> 24:33.120 Augustinian influenced anthropology. 24:33.120 --> 24:41.200 In Luther's book on the bondage of will, Dei Servo Arbitrio, written in 1525 and directed 24:41.280 --> 24:48.320 against Erasmus, it's even more radical than in the words of Augustine himself in some 24:48.320 --> 24:50.320 respects. 24:50.320 --> 24:58.000 So perhaps we should say that reformatory anthropology transforms the black anthropology 24:58.000 --> 24:59.760 of Augustine. 24:59.760 --> 25:07.360 And yet, on the other hand, there is Luther's Treatise on Freedom, Dei Libertati Christiana, 25:07.440 --> 25:15.840 written in 1520, in which he states that man is a perfectly free lord of all and subject 25:15.840 --> 25:22.960 to none, and also a dutiful servant who is subject to everyone. 25:22.960 --> 25:29.280 In terms of tradition history, this is certainly not influenced by Origen. 25:29.280 --> 25:35.440 And yet it stands in a line of thought that was also important to the great Alexandrine. 25:35.440 --> 25:37.280 Many thanks. 25:37.280 --> 25:46.720 If one tries to hold together the dark anthropology of Dei Servo Arbitrio and the dialectics of 25:46.720 --> 25:55.120 Dei Libertati Christiana with its great passion for freedom, not as in some Lutheran traditions, 25:55.120 --> 26:02.480 to displace the one or the other, then one will not want to accuse someone who has the 26:02.560 --> 26:10.640 idea of keeping the tension-ridden pair of Augustinian and Origenan anthropology together 26:10.640 --> 26:17.600 with equal attention, at least during a lecture, of a lack of intellectual clarity. 26:18.960 --> 26:27.520 Far be it from me to commend the recent terrible events in Oslo, which united the whole world, 26:28.160 --> 26:32.480 and thus also myself, in sorrow together with you. 26:33.280 --> 26:41.040 But the events show that the freedom both of the individual and of the community and 26:41.040 --> 26:49.280 the multicultural society of our times is still most threatened by dark forces that 26:49.280 --> 26:52.240 can get out of control in a person. 26:53.120 --> 27:01.680 At the same time, regardless of such ever-present dark forces, there is no alternative to a 27:01.680 --> 27:03.600 liberal social order. 27:04.400 --> 27:12.560 I'm convinced that these dark forces can be analyzed more precisely, and the foundations 27:12.560 --> 27:20.080 of a commitment to a liberal society of free individuals laid more realistically against 27:20.080 --> 27:24.320 the background of these mentioned Protestant traditions. 27:26.240 --> 27:34.480 I repeat, my purpose in my prayer for church history that creatively transform its Protestant 27:34.480 --> 27:42.400 traditions with a view to the future is not a repristination of reformatory value judgments 27:42.400 --> 27:50.320 on history or an anticipation of possible reformatory value judgments on the history 27:50.320 --> 27:53.440 that has occurred since the 16th century. 27:54.240 --> 28:03.200 The fact that Luther had a higher estimation of Augustine than of Origen, to put it mildly, 28:03.760 --> 28:10.560 is actually largely irrelevant for our analysis of these two ancient theologians. 28:11.360 --> 28:19.840 My purpose is the creative transformation of actual or possible reformatory value judgments 28:19.840 --> 28:27.200 on history against the background of opportunities that reformatory theology opens up. 28:27.760 --> 28:36.480 When, as Gerhard Ebeling observed so well, it teaches how to distinguish but does not 28:36.480 --> 28:41.520 unilaterally reject anything of what it has distinguished. 28:42.400 --> 28:49.120 Even when a distinction is made between the law and the gospel, most reformers do not 28:49.120 --> 28:51.600 teach simple antinomianism. 28:52.320 --> 28:59.520 The same applies to the dialectic of freedom and commitment, especially because Martin 28:59.520 --> 29:04.560 Luther, in agreement with Paul, can speak of the power of sin. 29:04.560 --> 29:12.480 He can describe people in certain respects as being free, as sinners acquitted by God. 29:13.280 --> 29:21.520 If one wished to summarize this specific reformatory dialectic in a concise formula, 29:21.520 --> 29:30.240 one could speak of the der dunkle Grund der Freiheit, the dark foundation of, or grounds 29:30.320 --> 29:37.280 for freedom, to quote the Old Testament scholar Otto Kaiser, der dunkle Grund der Freiheit, 29:37.280 --> 29:40.160 the dark foundation or grounds for freedom. 29:40.880 --> 29:45.440 It is well known that such dialectic is difficult to hold together. 29:46.080 --> 29:53.440 The enormous modern day passion for freedom lacks the dimension of sin, also occasionally, 29:53.440 --> 29:56.720 by the way, when theologians speak in this spirit. 29:57.280 --> 30:04.640 The message of man's fall into sin in the revival movements of the last century lacks 30:04.640 --> 30:07.120 the living experience of freedom. 30:08.400 --> 30:15.680 It therefore seems to me that the Protestant tradition of church history that is conducted 30:15.680 --> 30:23.760 in such a way that the reformatory dialectic of distinctions retains primacy, that this 30:23.760 --> 30:28.800 tradition prepares one especially well for the multicultural future. 30:29.600 --> 30:38.080 For in this way, the most diverse, even conflicting, traditions in their own respective right can 30:38.080 --> 30:45.360 be redesigned with a view to the future and help, for example, to preserve freedom in 30:45.360 --> 30:53.040 spite of ever-present forms of darkness, because the form of darkness are seen as der dunkle 30:53.120 --> 30:57.840 Grund der Freiheit, the dark foundation or grounds for freedom. 30:59.200 --> 31:07.120 In a famous speech given by Adolf von Harnack in October 1910 to the student club of the 31:07.120 --> 31:14.560 University of Oslo, Christiania, on the course of life and the laws of life, he said at the 31:14.560 --> 31:21.440 beginning, according to the transcript made by Edwin Berggraf, I quote Harnack in the 31:21.440 --> 31:28.800 words of Berggraf, you must engage in all historical study, you means the students, 31:28.800 --> 31:34.480 you must engage in all historical study in a truly universal manner. 31:35.440 --> 31:43.040 In our present age, in which Histoire totale, or global history, is demanded everywhere, 31:43.040 --> 31:51.120 this is of course not a most banal phrase, as Harnack observes in a cautionary note, 31:51.200 --> 31:57.920 but a very topical program formula that could also have been set by Fernand Braudel and the 31:57.920 --> 32:04.880 many who followed him on the road towards Histoire globale or Histoire a part anteriere. 32:05.840 --> 32:13.840 A church history that transforms the Protestant traditions into the multicultural future has a 32:13.840 --> 32:21.440 very rich theological justification for this claim in the form of the reformatory dialectic. 32:22.000 --> 32:29.920 In other words, the reformatory dialectic of distinctions is the strongest theological reason 32:29.920 --> 32:34.000 to engage in global history in the era of globalization. 32:35.040 --> 32:42.240 It is no coincidence that Harnack does not mention such relationship in his Oslo lecture, 32:42.240 --> 32:49.360 which was held just over 100 years ago. The tradition of reformatory dialectic of distinction 32:49.360 --> 32:56.640 was meaningless to him, and he regarded its repristination and transformation with a deep 32:56.640 --> 33:02.960 irritation in the 1920s. I remember to you the correspondence between Harnack and Barth. 33:04.160 --> 33:11.280 But now it's high time I turn to a second dimension of the title you've asked me to speak 33:11.280 --> 33:17.760 about, the title Protestant tradition in a multicultural future. I'm a church historian and 33:17.760 --> 33:25.040 not a prophet, and I do not of course know which Protestant traditions will survive in a multicultural 33:25.040 --> 33:31.760 future. One reason being that I have much less knowledge of the situation of Protestantism in 33:31.760 --> 33:40.160 Norway and the cities and the country than of the situation in Germany and America. Furthermore, 33:40.160 --> 33:47.840 I'm neither a systematic theologian nor a sociologist of religion. What I lack, as I am 33:47.840 --> 33:55.760 repeatedly forced to painfully admit, is the precise set of instruments of the one discipline 33:55.760 --> 34:03.040 to analyze the present and the normative sense of mission of the other discipline for establishing 34:03.040 --> 34:11.680 the tradition that should definitely endure. But as a church historian, I can offer traditions from 34:11.680 --> 34:20.240 the treasure chests of the past that have hardly been taken into account, in my view, without 34:20.240 --> 34:28.320 sufficient reason. In the tradition history of Protestantism, hitherto, also they are of great 34:28.320 --> 34:36.400 importance in our multicultural societies. For the purpose of this honorary lecture, I shall mention 34:36.400 --> 34:45.360 just two examples. The first is as follows. In the view of the growing Muslim cliques in Europe, 34:45.360 --> 34:55.040 Islam should be perceived much more as part of the Protestant traditions. Here again, I begin my line 34:55.040 --> 35:04.160 of argument not as late as the 16th century, but in late antiquity. We are realizing with increasing 35:04.160 --> 35:14.720 clarity that the emerging Islam and its holy book, the Koran, do not represent a special early medieval 35:14.720 --> 35:22.800 Arab tradition, which soon after its emergence began to flood the Christian West of the Middle Ages. 35:23.760 --> 35:33.120 Rather, it was one of the three great religions that dominated late antiquity and were simultaneously 35:33.120 --> 35:43.760 profoundly shaped by said late antiquity. On the southern Arabian peninsula, there were both Jews and 35:43.760 --> 35:52.560 Christians and Muslims. And all three world religions interacted with each other and fought 35:52.560 --> 36:01.040 against each other, as has become increasingly clear in the recent years, as a result of a wide 36:01.040 --> 36:12.400 variety of works. To name just one example, a commentary on the Koran from Syriac Christian 36:12.400 --> 36:18.240 texts is currently being written at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences as part of 36:18.240 --> 36:24.080 the Corpus Quranicum project. You are able to check the internet and some parts of the commentary 36:24.080 --> 36:31.520 are already in the internet. The Berlin-based scholar in Islamic studies, Angelika Neuwirth, for example, 36:31.520 --> 36:38.800 claims to have observed elements in the Quranic stories about Mary that can ultimately be traced 36:38.800 --> 36:46.640 back to the poetry of Ephraim the Syrian. And the Israeli-born Oxford-based religious historian 36:46.640 --> 36:55.840 Guy Stroumsa recently proposed the interesting project of a Preparatio Islamica. Eusebius of Caesarea, 36:55.840 --> 37:03.360 the late antique bishop of Caesarea, who is often called the father of church history, once presented 37:03.440 --> 37:11.280 fragments from pagan literature and science as Preparatio Evangelica. In the same way, Stroumsa is 37:11.280 --> 37:18.960 looking for theological topoi in ancient Jewish and Christian literature which might explain why 37:18.960 --> 37:27.920 both simple and well-educated Christians embraced Islam. Possible texts might be writings characterized 37:27.920 --> 37:37.680 by strict monotheism, despite all elaborate trinity theories or trinity teaching, but certainly also 37:37.680 --> 37:46.320 clear eschatologically conditioned ethical instructions. Of course, here too a lot of research still 37:46.320 --> 37:54.320 needs to be done. However, such a need certainly also exists for early and later modern era. 37:55.120 --> 38:02.720 Reformatory references to Islam are certainly not exhausted in the various so-called Turkish 38:02.720 --> 38:11.040 pamphlets, Türkenbüchlein, which my Göttingen colleague Thomas Kaufmann has examined. And in the 19th 38:11.040 --> 38:17.760 century in particular there are many interesting cross-references. I need only mention the names of 38:17.760 --> 38:23.760 the Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen or the Sweden-born exegete and Palestine scholar 38:23.760 --> 38:30.400 Gustav Dallmann, without looking in greater detail into their still relevant contributions 38:30.400 --> 38:37.200 to an understanding of the early history of Islam, the Koran, or the folklore of Arab tribes. 38:38.160 --> 38:45.920 Of course, again it cannot simply be a matter of simple repristination of past judgments. 38:45.920 --> 38:52.720 No road leads from the ancient and early modern statements about Islam to a contemporary theology 38:52.720 --> 39:00.640 of religions. However, were we to study such overlooked relations between Judaism, Christianity, 39:00.640 --> 39:07.040 and Islam more carefully, it would be clear that the Protestant tradition in the multicultural 39:07.040 --> 39:13.760 future ties us much more closely to Islam than it is suggested by the classical models of the 39:13.760 --> 39:22.400 Christian West. Dealing with the many repressed traditions of unsuccessful encounters and with a 39:22.800 --> 39:29.600 few successful contacts between the world religions, which are actually much more repressed, 39:29.600 --> 39:35.840 can prepare us for the reality of the many different encounters in the present and the future. 39:36.880 --> 39:44.400 The close interaction between the Jewish-Christian dialogue in Germany after 1945 39:44.400 --> 39:50.560 and the diverse historical explanations into the history of religious dialect between Judaism and 39:50.560 --> 39:57.680 Christianity that have been published since the fateful German year allow at least limited hopes 39:57.680 --> 40:06.400 also for the Christian-Muslim dialogue. In conclusion, I would like to offer as a church historian 40:06.400 --> 40:14.960 a second example of a Protestant tradition which, again, it seems to me without sufficient reason, 40:14.960 --> 40:20.160 has gone largely unnoticed by the tradition history of Protestantism hitherto. 40:20.960 --> 40:28.000 Even though it is of great importance in our multicultural societies, I'm referring to the 40:28.000 --> 40:36.400 American tradition of directly linking civil rights, which is not identical to the German term 40:36.400 --> 40:45.200 Bürgerrechte, civil rights with theological ethics and thus not intensifying the latter to the same 40:45.200 --> 40:53.600 strongly individual ethical extent as we are accustomed to in our European tradition. 40:54.560 --> 41:01.120 Such traditions are linked in particular with the name of the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 41:01.680 --> 41:09.040 about whom some critical comments should certainly also be made. Together with Cannon and Morgenthau, 41:09.600 --> 41:16.960 Niebuhr was one of the most influential advisors to the Kennedy administration and particularly 41:16.960 --> 41:23.840 since the days of the Obama administration has again a very marked influence on US policy. 41:24.800 --> 41:33.360 One of the many striking dichotomies in the works of Reinhold Niebuhr is the fact that since his time 41:33.360 --> 41:42.560 as a minister in the auto capital Detroit from 1915 to 1928, he combined a comparably strict 41:42.560 --> 41:49.280 relevation theory, which his contemporaries occasionally even called neo-orthodox, 41:49.280 --> 41:56.560 with a theologically founded option for the social gospel movement. The arrogance with which 41:56.560 --> 42:04.720 the Protestant churches of the south in particular treated their black fellow citizens in the 1950s 42:04.720 --> 42:13.760 and 60s let Niebuhr straight back to the influences of the original sin on human activity. He regarded 42:13.760 --> 42:21.120 the advocacy of equal civil rights for all Americans as a simple duty of Christian life. 42:22.240 --> 42:30.240 In this respect, the civil rights movement was able to base itself on elements of his theology. 42:30.240 --> 42:36.240 Martin Luther King, for example, was personally strongly influenced by Niebuhr's theology. 42:37.200 --> 42:44.960 Such Protestant traditions in America hardly played any role when I was studying theology 42:44.960 --> 42:54.160 in Germany in the 80s. At that time, church history was consistently restricted its horizon 42:54.160 --> 43:00.880 to the globalized Roman Empire. Nevertheless, reformation history was still pursued with a 43:00.880 --> 43:07.840 view on the entire German-speaking world, much more Wittenberg, but still a little Geneva. 43:08.480 --> 43:15.280 At best, any European history of the reformation was limited to a brief supplementary observations 43:15.280 --> 43:22.960 in the last lessons of lecture. However, the great cycle of lectures on church history ended with a 43:22.960 --> 43:29.680 confessing church in Berlin-Dahlem, from the globalized Roman world to the small Berlin 43:30.640 --> 43:39.680 part, Berlin village-Dahlem. Not in the global ecumenical community, and Niebuhr was not even 43:39.680 --> 43:47.280 mentioned. Nor was the difficult history of German Protestant theology on the theme of human rights, 43:48.080 --> 43:53.600 civil rights are hardly even mentioned in German-language Protestant ethics anyway, 43:54.320 --> 44:02.960 as I was recently assured by Wolfgang Huber. Also in secular ethics, civil and human rights belong 44:02.960 --> 44:10.400 very close together and cannot be considered separately. Here, too, it seems to me that not a 44:10.480 --> 44:17.200 simple repristination of Reinhold Niebuhr's theology is, of course, possible, if only because 44:17.200 --> 44:24.720 of the wide apocalyptic dualisms with which he supported U.S. anti-communism in the 1950s. 44:25.440 --> 44:32.400 Similarly, by the way, as a church historian, one must warn against a simple repristination of 44:32.400 --> 44:40.560 Friedrich Schleiermacher's social theories. But it seems to me highly important to simply remember 44:40.560 --> 44:47.440 the Protestant tradition of a strict theological inclusion of civil rights in North America, 44:47.440 --> 44:53.760 and a transformation of corresponding theories of the past for a multicultural future. 44:54.720 --> 45:02.560 How many citizens of the earth are deprived of their civil rights up to the present day, 45:02.560 --> 45:10.080 including, by the way, some refugees from the crisis regions of this world in my own home country? 45:12.240 --> 45:19.760 At least as far as German theology is concerned, and again quoting a slightly altered version of 45:19.840 --> 45:27.280 Adolf von Harnack's Oslo speech of 1910, we must understand Protestant traditions in a truly 45:27.280 --> 45:35.040 universal way, if they are to take their full contribution to a multicultural future. 45:35.680 --> 45:43.280 And we must not think and work in such a continental European way, in such a German way, 45:43.280 --> 45:50.640 as we have done up to now. It seems to me that we can learn something from our Scandinavian, 45:50.640 --> 45:58.480 from our Norwegian colleagues and students and friends in this respect. With this gesture of 45:58.480 --> 46:06.240 respect, I would like to conclude my remarks on the Protestant tradition in the multicultural future. 46:07.200 --> 46:13.200 Dear colleagues, dear students, dear friends of the high theological faculty, 46:13.200 --> 46:21.440 this is a very traditional German expression, of this 200-year-old university, 46:21.440 --> 46:30.480 dear Dean Willer, you have shown me a very great honor. I repeat again, a very, very great honor. 46:30.480 --> 46:38.560 And made me as impressed as I'm grateful. It was only these feelings of deep gratitude 46:38.560 --> 46:45.680 for the prestigious award that occasioned me to leave for a moment the research field of 46:45.680 --> 46:54.320 Christian antiquity that I hold so dear, and to venture out into the difficult field of general 46:54.320 --> 47:00.800 historical methodology, the diagnosis of the present and the prediction of the future. 47:01.520 --> 47:07.600 If you, ladies and gentlemen, dear students, dear friends, dear colleagues, have been able to draw 47:07.600 --> 47:15.920 any benefit from this attempt of mine, then my intention of giving at least some humble thanks 47:15.920 --> 47:22.960 for a great gift will, at least to some extent, become a reality. I thank you for your patience.