Dorner, Isaac August

D.D., one of the greatest modern divines and teachers of Germany; b. at Neuhausen, in the kingdom of Wiirtemberg, June 20, 1809; d. at Wiesbaden, July 8, 1884; buried, July 27, in the family vault at Neuhausen, where a plain monument is erected to his memory. He was the sixth of twelve children born to the pastor of Neuhausen, and was educated first by a private tutor, then in the Latin school at Tuttlingen. In 1823 he entered the collegiate seminary at Maulbronn; in 1827, the University of Tiibingen, where he studied philosophy and theology. He visited England and North Germany. In 1834 he became repetent (teaching tutor, or fellow, in the theological department of the university), having two years previous acted as a istant to his father; and in 1837, profe or extraordinary of theology in Tiibingen. In 1835 David Fried rich Strau , a colleague of Dorner, published his Life of Jesus, and Dorner i ued the first pages of his work of directly opposite tendency, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, in which the historical Christ of the Gospels is traced through the ages of the Church as the greatest fact in Christian thought and experience. His teacher, Christian Fried rich Schmid, had incited him to take up the work, into which he put his thought and study until its completion in 1839. This work determined Dorner's place among theologians and doctrinal historians, and was a most effectual, though indirect, answer to Strau and his mythical theory. The work was afterwards greatly enlarged and improved by an exhaustive study of the sources from the apostolic age down to the recent Kenosis controversy. In 1839 he was called to the University of Kiel as ordinary profe or, and there remained until 1843. He formed an intimate friendship with Bishop Marten sen, the greatest theologian of Denmark; and even the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty did not disturb it. His principal writing during his Kiel residence is his dogmatic treatise upon the Foundation Ideas of the Protestant Church, in which he maintained that the so-called material and formal principles of the Reformation — i.e., justification by faith, and the supreme authority of Scripture, respectively— were to be considered as two pillars inseparably joined, so that each stands with and through the other. This was his word of comfort to those distre ed by Strau : No criticism can alter the fact that the primitive Church did record in the New Testament, by means of the Spirit proceeding from Christ, its impre ions and experiences of Christ's salvation. On the other hand, faith holds fast to the written word. For the Christ whom faith experiences is the Christ of Scripture, which alone enables the Christian to understand and a ert faith and the mystery of his new personality. Justification, he used to say, is the only completed fact in the Chi-istian: every thing else is growth. In 1843 he became profe or of theology at Kbnigsberg, in 1847 at Bonn, in 1853 at Gottingen, and finally in 1862 at Berlin. Here, besides being profe or in the university, he was superior consistorial councillor (Oberkirchenrath), and from here for twenty-two years he exerted a quiet but mighty influence on the Evangelical Church of Pru ia, and on students from all parts of the world. In 1873 he visited, with his son August, the United States, as a delegate to the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, and read a thoughtful paper on the Infallibilism of the Vatican Council, which is published in the Proceedings, New York, pp. 427- 436. He travelled in New England, and as far south as Washington, and was deeply impre ed with the religious and literary activity of America. He carried back with him the most favorable recollections, and heartily welcomed American students in his hospitable home. The last years of his life were clouded by a painful cancerous affection of his face, and the incurable malady of one of his sons, a promising youth, who lost his mind while studying at college. He bore his trial with meek resignation, and never complained. He continued to work on his Christian Ethics till the last weeks of his life, which he spent at Wittenberg, in view of the Luther house. Then, feeble as he was, he set out with his wife on a journey to Switzerland for rest, and proposed visiting, on the way, the national monument of German i a on the Niederwald, by the Rhine; but was seized with a hemorrhage, and died suddenly at Wiesbaden. His wife followed him a few months afterwards to his eternal rest. Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Mtiller, and Richard Rothe. He mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel, appropriated the best elements of both, infused into them a positive evangelical faith and a historical spirit. The central idea of his system was the divine-human personality of Christ, as the highest revealer of God, the perfect ideal of humanity, and the Saviour from sin and death. His theology is pre-eminently chris to logical, and his monumental history of christ ology will long remain the richest mine of study in that department. He lectured on exegesis, on New-Testament theology, on symbolics, and especially on dogmatics and ethics, in which he excelled all his contemporaries. He was one of the revisers of the Luther Bible, and proposed a correspondence with the Anglo-American Revision Committee, while in. New York, 1873, which was carried on for a short time. He was alive to all the practical church questions, and labored in the Oberkirchenrath for synodical church government, and the development of the lay agency and the voluntary principle. He had a deep interest in the work of " inner mi ions," and was one of its directors. He was, with Wichern and von Bethmann-Hollweg, one of the founders of the German.. Church Diet, in the revolutionary year 1848, and one of the leading speakers and managers at its annual se ions. His catholicity went beyond the limits of the German churches, and was in full sympathy with the principles and aims of the International Evangelical Alliance. He was a most devoted and conscientious teacher, and a favorite among students. The Johanneum and the Me lanch thon House in Berlin are memorials of his active interest in indigent students. The leading traits in his personal character were purity, simplicity, courtesy, gentlene , humility, and love. Decan Jiiger and Diaconus Knapp paid noble testimonies to his virtues, at the funeral (Zur Erinnerung an D r Isaak August Dorner, Tuttlingen, 1881:); and Dr. Kleinert, as dean of the theological faculty, delivered a eulogy before the University of Berlin, July 26, 1884 (Zum Geddchtni I. A. D.'s, Berlin, 1884), in which he places him next to Schleiermacher, and calls him "a leader and prophet in the highest questions of theology;" adding, that, "great as were his merits in theological science, the noblest thing in him was his personality, which reflected the image of Christ, and impre ed itself indelibly on all who knew him." 70 His son has given a good account of his theological system in Dem Andenken von Dr I. A. Dorner von Dr Dorner, Prof, in Wittenberg, Gotha, 1885. The following is a list of Dorner's publications: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christ i von den altesten Zeiten bis auf die neueste dargestellt, Stuttgart, 1839; 2d ed., more than doubled in size, 1st part, Die Lehre von der Person Christ i in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten, Stuttgart, 1845; 2d part, Die Lehre von der Person Christ i vom Ende des vierten Jahrliunderts bis zur Gegenwart, 3 divisions (bis zur Ref on nation, 1853; in dem Reformationszeital/er, 1854; bis zur Gegenwart, 1856), Berlin, 1853-56 (English trans., by W. L. Alexander and D. W. Simon, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Edinburgh, 1861-63, 5 vols.); Der Pietism us, in be son dere in Wiirtemberg, und seine speculatioen Gegner, Binder und Mdrklin, mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Verhdltni des Pietism us und der Kirche, Hamburg, 1840; Das Princip unserer Kirche nach dem innern Verhdltni seiner zwei Seiten betrachtet, Kiel, 1841; De or at i one Christ i eschatologic a Matt. xxiv. 1-36 (Luc. xxi. 5-86, Marc. xiii. 1-32) a ervata, Stuttgart, 1844; Das Verhdltni zwisclien Kirche und Staat, aus dem Gesichtspunkte evangel is cher Wis sens chaft, Bonn, 1847; Sendschreiben uber Reform der evangel is chen Landes kir chen im Zus am men hang mil der Herslellung einer evangelischdeutschen National kir che; an Herrn C. I. Nitzsch in Berlin und Herrn Julius Miiller in Halle, Bonn, 1848; Ueber Jesu siindlose Vollkommenheit, Gotha, 1862 (translated into English by H. B. Smith, New York); Geschichte der protestant is chen Theologie, Munich, 1867 (English trans., History of Protestant Theology, particularly in Germany, viewed according to its fundamental movement, and in connection with the religious, moral, and intellectual life, Edinburgh, 1871, 2 vols.); System der christ lichen Glaubenslehre, Berlin, 1879-80, 2d ed. 1886, 2 vols. (English trans., by Rev. Profs. Alfred Cave and J. S. Banks, A System of Christian Doctrine, Edinburgh, 1880-82, 4 vols.); Gesammelte Schriften auf dem Gebiet der system at is chen Theologie, Exegese und Geschichte, Berlin, 1883 (contains his valuable metaphysical e ays on the unchangeability of God, and criticism of the Kenosis theory of the incarnation); System der christ lichen Sittenlehre (560 pp., edited by August Dorner, his son), Berlin, 1885. He founded and edited, with Liebner, the valuable theological quarterly, Jahrbucherfur deutsche Theologie, Gotha, 1856-1878. PHILIP SCHAFF.