Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert (19 August 1885 – 21 November 1954) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of both church history and systematic theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His writings in the fields of Christian dogmatics, ethics, and history have had great influence on modern Christianity in general and modern Lutheranism in particular.
Biography Elert was born on 19 August 1885 in the town of Heldrungen in the Prussian Province of Saxony (present-day Thuringia), but he grew up in northern Germany.For his early years, see Elert's entry in the "Golden Book" of the University of Erlangen (5 January 1927), summarized by Kaufmann, 236–238. See also Sparn, 159f., and Keller and Roth, 9–10. The Elert family had originally come from Rarfin in Pomerania, near Kolberg on the Baltic Sea.Green, 231. They belonged to the "Old Lutherans" who had rejected the 1817 Prussian Union of Churches. Elert's parents were August Elert and Friederike, née Graf, Elert.Elert, Rudolf Rocholls Philosophie der Geschichte, 139. After attending the Realgymnasium in Harburg and the Gymnasium in Husum, he studied theology, philosophy, history, German literature, psychology and law in Breslau, Erlangen, and Leipzig.Becker, 97. He earned doctorates in philosophy and theology at Erlangen.Becker, 97–98.
After working as a tutor for a short time in Livonia, he served as a pastor from 1912 to 1919 in Seefeld, Pomerania.Becker, 98. During World War I he served as a military chaplain on several fronts.Beyschlag, 152.
In 1919 Elert became director of the Old-Lutheran Theological Seminary in Breslau.Becker, 98. In 1923 he was appointed to the chair of church history at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen (now called the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg). With the death of Philip Bachman in 1932, he was appointed to the chair of systematic theology.Keller and Roth, 11. In the academic year 1926/27 he was elected rector of the university, and in 1928–29 and 1935–43 he served as the dean of the theological faculty.Becker, 100. Throughout his years in Erlangen, he was active in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria.Rudolf Keller, "Erinnerung an Werner Elert, Journal of the Martin Luther Bund 26 (1979), 9–26; cf. Green, 235. Elert frequently participated in ecumenical meetings, including the first World Lutheran Conference (where he delivered a paper) and the Second Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in 1952.Becker, 99. In 1927 he gave a major address ("The Call to Unity") at the Lausanne Conference, the first meeting of the "Faith and Order" ecumenical movement.Becker, 100.
Elert retired in 1953. He died in Erlangen on 21 November 1954 in his 70th year, due to complications from stomach cancer.Green, 261-62.
In 1912 Elert married Annemarie (née Froböss, b. 1892), who was the daughter of church official Georg Froböss. They had three children: two sons, both of whom died on the Eastern front in World War II, and one daughter, who later married a Lutheran pastor.Keller and Roth, 11. The Elert house in Erlangen (Hindenburgstrasse 44) is now a study center for theology students ("Werner-Elert-House") that is owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria.Green, 263.
Theological Work Elert's scholarly life can be divided into five periods.Becker, 101. In the first of these periods (1910–21), he devoted himself to the philosophy of history and to a defense of the Christian faith vis-a-vis modern philosophy and theology. In the second period (1922–32), he worked on a two-volume study of Lutheranism. The third period (1932–40), which coincided with the regime of Adolf Hitler, was devoted to issues in dogmatics and matters of church and state. The fourth period (1940–49) was marked by his study of Lutheran ethics. In the final period of his life (1950–54), he worked on issues in the history of Christian dogma, particularly relating to Eastern Orthodox christology and eucharistic fellowship.
His first major work, Der Kampf um das Christentum [the struggle over Christianity], published in 1921, offers a critique of the synthesis that developed in the nineteenth century between liberal Protestant theology (especially through the influence of Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, and Friedrich Schleiermacher) and modern German "culture" (Kultur). As such, the book provides a critical perspective on these thinkers as well as many others.Following the publication of this book, Elert was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Greifswald. Cf. Becker, 102. In Elert's view, modern theology must return to an independent position that maintains its critical distance from all influences that are foreign to the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. Elert was convinced that modern Western culture is in a state of decline (cf. Oswald Spengler) and stands under the judgment of God. The final outcome of any attempt to maintain a synthesis between Christian theology and modern culture "would be the death of the former."Elert, Der Kampf um das Christentum, 3. "Only when Christianity becomes entirely separate again for a moment, i.e., entirely free from the present 'culture,' will it demonstrate its power for producing a new thing, something it has done more than once in its history."Elert, Der Kampf, 490, as translated by Becker, 103. Christian theology will only flourish when it maintains its "diastasis" from modernity.Elert, Der Kampf, 3. If Christianity is not disentangled "from a decaying culture," it will be "dragged down into the whirlpool."Elert, Der Kampf, 489. Following earlier theologians in the Erlangen tradition (e.g., F. H. R. Frank, Ludwig Ihmels), Elert stressed the importance of understanding the connection between the historic biblical witness to Christ and the immediacy and "certainty" of the individual Christian's faith in God through the gospel.Keller and Roth, 16; Becker, 103.
Elert's call for the "diastasis" of Christianity from modern thought also impacted some of his later writings. For example, in his Morphologie des Luthertums [the structure of Lutheranism], he presupposed a confessional "dynamism" of Lutheranism, "which, as a basic structural fact, is given to the historical changes themselves.”Kaufman, 216. In his final, unfinished work on the christology of Theodore of Pharan, Elert highlighted the relationship between the dogma of the ancient church and the biblical image of Christ in order to show, contrary to the thesis of Adolph von Harnack, that Christian dogma is not the foreign intrusion of Greek metaphysics into the original gospel, but rather it is a necessary "given," grounded in the gospel and liturgical witness to Christ.Elert, Der Ausgang der Altkirchlichen Christologie, 12–24.
The second period of Elert's scholarly work began with the research and writing of a brief outline of Lutheran teaching.Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriss (Munich: Beck, 1924). Two years after the publication of the first edition, this little exercise in Lutheran systematic theology was revised and expanded.Green, 235. Part One of the book ("The Struggle with God") describes the human experience of freedom and fate [Schicksal], in which the latter concept refers to "the product of all the factors which shape our lives, other than the will to be free".Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums, 2d ed., 4. Here, Elert stresses the fundamental opposition between God and humanity, which is experienced by human beings as a limitation to their knowledge, as an awareness of their moral failure before God (their guilt), and the fear of death.Becker, 105. This first part of the book ends by summarizing biblical teaching about the law of God, the hidden God (deus absconditus), and God's wrath against sin. Part Two ("Reconciliation") sets forth the Christian teaching of the good news about Jesus Christ, the redeemer. While the law of God is experienced by all human beings, even apart from the Christian message, the gospel is received by hearing the biblical promise of God's forgiveness in Christ and by trusting it in faith.Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums, 40. Part Three ("Freedom") offers a brief description of Lutheran ethics, in which the forgiven sinner lives out his or her "new life in Christ" in responsible freedom within the various "orders" in creation (i.e., in one's family, in civil society, through art/culture, through knowledge and education, and in business).Elert, Die Lehre des Luthertums, 82f.
Elert's most important and influential work was also produced in this period: his two-volume, 1000-page study of "the structure of Lutheranism."Cf. Green, 235; Becker, 106. The first volume presents a historical trajectory of key Lutheran teachings, the central one of which is the proper distinction between law and gospel. Elert called this central theme the "evangelischer Ansatz," the "gospel point of departure" or the "gospel entry point."Becker, 106. He also called it "the confessional constant," which he found to be "effective" through all the historical changes of Lutheranism, a constant "that is operative beyond individual connections and, as a dominant force, either determines or helps determine the outcome."Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 1.5. As he traced this historical dynamic, he judged that the "evangelischer Ansatz" had been strongest in Luther's theology, was properly developed in the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, was partly strengthened and partly weakened in the writings of Philip Melanchthon, was partly renewed and partly distorted in Formula of Concord, and was significantly distorted in the periods of Lutheran Orthodoxy, Pietism, and Rationalism.Becker, 107. The second volume follows the same historical trajectory from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, but this time Elert focuses on the social teachings and social consequences of Lutheranism.