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Neo-Lutheranism was a 19th-century revival movement within Lutheranism which began with the Pietist-driven Erweckung, or Awakening, and developed in reaction against theological rationalism and pietism.[1]
The movement followed the Old Lutheran movement and focused on a reassertion of the identity of Lutherans as a distinct group within the broader community of Christians, with a renewed focus on the Lutheran Confessions as a key source of Lutheran doctrine. Associated with these changes was an Evangelical-Catholic renewed focus on traditional doctrine and liturgy, which paralleled the growth of Anglo-Catholicism in England.[2] It was sometimes even called "German Puseyism".[3] In the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, neo-Lutheranism was paralleled by Johann Adam Möhler. The chief literary organ of the neo-Lutheranism was Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, edited by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg.
Neo-Lutheranism developed as a reaction against the Prussian Union[4] in a similar manner to the development of Tractarianism against the British government's decision to reduce the number of Irish bishoprics. The term has been defined different ways to distinguish it from the Old Lutherans movement, which was a schism in areas where a church union was enforced.
A distinction developed in neo-Lutheranism whereby one side held to repristination theology, which attempted to restore historical Lutheranism, while the other held to the theology of the Erlangen School coming out of the University at Erlangen. The repristination theology group was represented by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, Carl Paul Caspari, Gisle Johnson, Friedrich Adolf Philippi, C. F. W. Walther, and others.[4] Repristination theology is more similar to later Confessional Lutheranism. In contrast, confessionalism to the Erlangen School was not to be static, but dynamic. The Erlangen School tried to combine Reformation theology with new learning and included Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank, Theodosius Harnack, Franz Delitzsch, Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann, Karl Friedrich August Kahnis, Christoph Ernst Luthardt, and Gottfried Thomasius.[4]
Neo-Lutheranism is sometimes limited only to the theology and activity represented by Theodor Friedrich Dethlof Kliefoth, August Friedrich Christian Vilmar, Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe, August Friedrich Otto Münchmeyer, and Friedrich Julius Stahl, who had particularly high ecclesiology. They were against the idea of the invisible church, strongly contending that the church was an outward, visible institution of salvation.
They emphasised the ordained ministry instituted by Christ and the significance of the sacraments over the Word as Means of Grace. However, unlike the Erlangen School, this type of neo-Lutheranism did not have a lasting influence on Lutheran theology. Properly speaking, High Church Lutheranism began in Germany much later, with the creation of the Hochkirchliche Vereinigung Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses in 1918, inspired by 95 theses Stimuli et Clavi of 1917, exactly 100 years after Claus Harms' 95 theses.
Neo-Lutheranism is distinct from the term "neo-Protestantism", which is an exclusively liberal theology represented, for example, by Adolf von Harnack and his followers.
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