1. Wilhelm Pauck was a German-American church historian and historical theologian in the field of Reformation studies whose fifty-year teaching career reached from the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary, to Vanderbilt and Stanford universities.
Wilhelm Pauck's impact was extended through frequent lectures and visiting appointments in the US and Europe.
Wilhelm Pauck heard lectures by Karl Barth in Gottingen prior to returning to Berlin to pursue his dissertation on Martin Bucer's reformation treatise, De Regno Christi.
Wilhelm Pauck received the degree of Licentiate of Theology, University of Berlin, August 31,1925.
Fortuitously, upon the death of the church historian Henry H Walker in Chicago, Pauck was called back to Chicago, where he was named Instructor in Church History in 1926 and remained in America for the rest of his career.
Alongside his Americanization Wilhelm Pauck never lost sight of the twentieth-century plight and horror that had seized his homeland with the rise of fascism and the Hitler state.
Wilhelm Pauck's life mediated between his native and his adopted culture.
Wilhelm Pauck became an American citizen on November 3,1937.
Wilhelm Pauck married Olga Dietz Gumbel on May 1,1928 and rose to the rank of full professor by age 30.
Early on Wilhelm Pauck was troubled by the lack of attention that American liberal Protestantism gave to the theology of Karl Barth.
In later years Wilhelm Pauck emphasized that the title of this early book had ended with a question mark.
Wilhelm Pauck was already familiar with Tillich when he met the young Privatdozent in Berlin in 1921.
That friendship deepened when Wilhelm Pauck moved from Chicago to teach alongside Niebuhr and Tillich at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1953.
Wilhelm Pauck had long been acquainted with east coast theologians through participation in The Theological Discussion Group, which met twice a year to reflect on theological and social-economic issues.
Wilhelm Pauck was especially noted for his ability t o mediate the past as a lively classroom lecturer, seminar teacher, podium speaker, and panelist.
Wilhelm Pauck had assisted in the efforts to unite a German-American denomination, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, with his denomination, the Congregational Christian Churches, thus forming the United Church of Christ in 1957.
An active proponent of the ecumenical movement in the 1940s, including conversations with Roman Catholic theologians, Wilhelm Pauck consulted on the World Council of Churches meetings in Amsterdam and Evanston, Illinois.
Wilhelm Pauck had confidence in the significance of the past for the present, and came to regret elements of American culture that downplay the need for a sense of what modern believers owe to their predecessors.
Wilhelm Pauck took something like the same idea from his sole intellectual hero, Ernst Troeltsch, who taught that religion and theology are thoroughly historical, even when they purport to transmit eternal verities.
Wilhelm Pauck maintained that, for the foreseeable future, Protestant Christianity would necessarily continue to define itself over against Roman Catholicism, and vice versa.
Wilhelm Pauck criticized laissez-faire economic liberalism for its view of human autonomy, while viewing the task and challenge of theological liberalism to be that of preserving basic tenets of the faith while adapting to new historical conditions.
On Karl Barth's neo-Reformation teaching overall, Wilhelm Pauck's view was appreciative as well as critical.
Hence, the abiding lesson of Wilhelm Pauck's teaching is that critical historical scholarship and constructive theology must somehow continue to work together.