RITSCHL, ALBRECHT (1822-1889), German theologian, was born in Berlin on March 25, 1822. His father, Benjamin Ritschl (1783-1858), was from 1827 to 1854 general superintend ent and evangelical bishop of Pomerania. Albrecht studied at Bonn, Halle, Heidelberg and Tiibingen. At Halle he came under Hegelian influences. In 1845 he was entirely captivated by the Tiibingen school, and in Das Evangelium Marcions and das kanonische Evangelium des Lukas (1846) he appears as a disciple of F. C. Baur. But the second edition (1857) of his most im portant work, on the origin of the old Catholic Church (Die Entstehung der alt-kathol. Kirche), shows considerable divergence from the first edition (185o), and reveals an entire emancipation from Baur's method. Ritschl was professor of theology at Bonn (extraordinarius 1852 ; ordinarius 1859) and Gottingen (1864; Consistorialrath also in his addresses on religion delivered at the latter university showing the impression made upon his mind by his study of Kant and Schleiermacher. Finally, in came the influence of Rudolf Lotze. He wrote Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und V ersohnung (187o-74), and Die Geschichte des Pietismus (188o-86). He died at Gottingen on March 20, 1889.
Ritschl claims to carry on the work of Luther and Schleier macher. He criticizes especially the use of Aristotelianism and speculative philosophy in scholastic and Protestant the ology. He holds that such philosophy is too shallow for the ology. Hegelianism attempts to squeeze all life into the cate gories of logic : Aristotelianism deals with "things in general" and ignores the radical distinction between nature and spirit. Neither
Hegelianism nor Aristotelianism is "vital" enough to sound the depths of religious life. Neither conceives "God" as correlative to human "trust" (cf. Theologie und Metaphysik, esp. p. 8 seq.). But Ritschl's recoil carries him so far that he is left alone with merely "practical" experience. "Faith" knows God in His active relation to the "kingdom," but not at all as "self-existent." Ritschl's school, in which J. G. W. Herrmann, Julius Kaftan and Adolf Harnack were the chief names, diverged from his teaching in many directions; e.g., Kaftan appreciated the mystical side of religion and Harnack's criticism was very different from Ritschl's arbitrary exegesis. They were united on the value of faith knowledge as opposed to "metaphysic." See H. Schoen, Les Origines historiques de la theologie de Ritschl (1893) ; G. Ecke, Die theologische Schule, A. Ritschl's und die cvangelische Kirche der Gegenwart (1897) ; J. Orr, The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith (1898) and Ritschlianism: exposi tory and critical essays (1903) ; • A. E. Gavire, The Ritschlian Theology (1899) ; E. A. Edghill, Faith and Fact, a study of Ritschlianism (Iwo) ; R. Mackintosh, Ritschl (1915). The chief authority for his biography is Albrecht Ritschls Leben (2 vols., Leipzig, 1896) by his son Otto Ritschl.