Kirchengeschichte

The historiography of the church has undergone particularly lively development in the centuries of modernity. To the same extent that the position of the church and the Christian faith within society and intellectual life changed, so too did the understanding of the past of Christianity. Authoritative truths lost their scientific and historical validation, yet the conviction that church history represents a unique historical context, with its own origins and peculiar laws of life, was maintained and repeatedly emphasized. The overall seventeen texts of the eight most significant German church historians, from Pietism to liberal theology, thoroughly document the dynamic history of this discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries.