Schleiermacher and Halle

When he arrived in Halle, the university, founded in 1694, was already over a century old. Its theology faculty had been founded by Pietists, but the eighteenth century had turned it in a different direction: Baumgarten brought Wolff's philosophy into theology; Semler (1725–1791), “the father of German rationalism,” was one of the founders of historical-critical biblical scholarship. Schleiermacher took up Halle's chair in the wake of that current of rationalism.

Three years later, war forced the university to close, and he moved on to Berlin. Ten years after he left, in 1817, Halle and Wittenberg merged into what is today the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.

Pull the lens back, and these three years come into focus. The theology chair at the University of Halle swung through a long arc: Pietists laid its foundation, rationalism took it over, and Schleiermacher passed through for a brief three years; nineteen years after he left, August Tholuck arrived and stayed in Halle for more than fifty years, leading the faculty back to evangelical faith; in 1896, Gustav Warneck took up the world's first chair of Protestant missiology here — mission had set out from Halle, and a hundred and ninety years later, returned to Halle to become a field of scholarship.

How later generations judge his theology is another matter. What Halle records is this: he taught in this city for three years, and the city's spiritual swing has outlasted the tenure of any single professor.

A city's history of faith rarely runs in a straight line. Halle has seen the fire of Pietism, the cold front of rationalism, and the chair grow warm again. The chair has its own seasons; but the door is not in the chair's hands. Today, in this university city, we read Scripture, pray, and worship in Chinese — the swing is still moving, and the door has stayed open.