11 Facts About Adolf Schlatter

Adolf Schlatter was a well-known Swiss-born German Protestant theologian and professor specialising in the New Testament and systematics at Greifswald, Berlin and Tubingen.

Adolf Schlatter, born in St Gallen to a pietistic preacher, studied philosophy and theology in Basel and Tubingen between 1871 and 1875, gaining his post-doctoral teaching qualification in 1880.

Adolf Schlatter had to wait to be granted the privilege of taking an imposing battery of exams.

Adolf Schlatter was able to sit his exams in December 1880.

Adolf Schlatter became particularly well known for his analysis of the New Testament, which was accessible to a broad audience.

Adolf Schlatter was adamant about the manifestation of God in nature and in Jesus Christ, and this conviction led him to a criticism of the theophilosophical ideas of German idealism.

In 1895 Adolf Schlatter took part in a Protestant convention producing a declaration decrying the overwhelming dominance of theological liberalism on theological faculties in Germany at the time.

Adolf Schlatter had a deep impact on numerous students.

Adolf Schlatter's approach to faith, science and biblical criticism was a breath of fresh air for numerous theology students, giving them hope in an otherwise anti-supernatural intellectual environment, where all that remained of the New Testament was a "historical Jesus" offering the highest moral ideals for society.

Adolf Schlatter provided a perspective on 'the world' which later sustained Bonhoeffer's theology of the world.

Adolf Schlatter conveyed a sense of the 'authority' of Scripture which diverged significantly from the prevailing liberal-Protestant view of the Bible as a 'source-book for religious ideas' to be found not in but behind the text.