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