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eling, the movement came to have the character also of an attempt to find a middle way between confessionalists and rationalists. Its representatives had often the kind of breadth of sympathy which goes with lack of insight, rather than that breadth of sympathy which is due to the possession of insight. Yet Rothe rises to real distinction, especially in his forecast of the social interpretation of religion. With the men of this group arose a speculation concerning the person of Christ which for a time had some currency. It was called the theory of the kenosis. Jesus is spoken of in a famous passage of the letter to the Philippians; as having emptied himself of divine qualities that he might be found in fashion as a man. In this speculation the divine attributes were divided into two classes. Of the one class it was held Christ had emptied himself in becoming flesh, or at least he had them in abeyance. He had them, but did not use them. What we have here is but a despairing effort to be just to Jesus' humanity and yet to assert his deity in the ancient metaphysical terms. It is but saying yes and no in the same breath. Biedermann said sadly of the speculation that it represented the kenosis, not of the divine nature, but of the human understanding. RITSCHL AND THE RITSCHLIANS If any man in the department of theology in the latter half of the nineteenth century attained a position such as to entitle him to be compared with Schleiermacher, it was Ritschl. He was long the most conspicuous figure in any chair of dogmatic theology in Germany. He established a school of theological thinkers in a sense in which Schleiermacher never desired to gain a following. He exerted ecclesiastical influence of a kind which Schleiermacher never sought. He was involved in controversy in a degree to which the life of Schleiermacher presents no parallel. He was not a preacher, he was no philosopher. He was not a man of Schleiermacher's breadth of interest. His intellectual history presents more than one breach within itself, as that of Schleiermacher presented none, despite the wide arc which he traversed. Of Ritschl, as of Schleiermacher, it may be said that he exerted a great influence over many who have only in part agreed with him. Albrecht Ritschl was born in 1822 in Berlin, the son of a bishop in the Lutheran Church. He was educated at Bonn and at Tuebingen. He established himself at Bonn, where, in 1853, he became professor ext
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