Erik Peterson (theologian)

Erik Peterson
File:Erik Peterson in Rom 20-Nov-1938gif.gif Erik Peterson in Rome in 1938
Born	(1890-06-07)7 June 1890 Hamburg, Germany
Died
Nationality	German
Occupation	theologian and Christian archeologist

Erik Peterson Grandjean (7 June 1890 – 26 October 1960) was a German theologian and Christian archeologist.

Biography

Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world. He converted to Catholicism in 1930 and settled in Munich then Rome.

As he was unable to find a suitable teaching opportunity in Catholic Germany, Peterson moved to Rome in 1933, where he started a family of five children with the Roman Matilde Bertini. Years of great economic hardship followed, which was hardly alleviated by a small teaching position in church history at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archeology (PIAC) from 1937 onwards.

Peterson ruled out a permanent return to National Socialist Germany, where his effectiveness was increasingly politically restricted. It was not until 1947 that his teaching position in Rome was extended to an associate professorship for patristics and the relationship between antiquity and Christianity. A few weeks before his death in his native Hamburg, Peterson, who was already seriously ill, was awarded honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bonn and the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Munich. His grave is in Campo Verano in Rome and his estate is kept in the Biblioteca Erik Peterson at the University of Turin.

In 1947 he became professor of church history and patrology at PIAC. In 1960, the year of his death, he received honorary doctorates from the University of Bonn (Ph.D.) and the University of Munich (Th.D.).

Erik Peterson died in Hamburg at the age of 70.

Thought

By the early 1920s, Peterson had freed himself from his earlier ties to pietistic religiosity and his initial uncritical fascination with the history of religion school and quickly developed a comprehensive patristic and broad exegetical foundation. In the nature of his philological-theological interpretations, he was influenced by the phenomenology native to Göttingen.

Peterson first gained an international academic reputation in 1926 with the publication of his extended habilitation thesis on the ancient acclamation Heis Theos (‘One God!’). He continued his research into church history and religious history in many specialised studies on Christian antiquity, providing important impulses for understanding ancient Gnosticism, asceticism and apocalypticism as well as the relationship between Judaism and Christianity (anthology of scholarly essays entitled Early Church, Judaism, Gnosticism, 1959).

In 1925, Peterson provoked a scandalous sensation with his treatises What is Theology? and The Church, in which he argued against both liberal theology of such authors as Adolf von Harnack, and the dialectical theology of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann — Peterson was in close personal contact with Barth during their years together in Göttingen from 1921 to 1924. He argued in favour of a theology that was committed to the dogmatic tradition of the church in forms of ‘concrete argumentation’ and for a church that was founded on apostolic foundations. Peterson's theology centred on a specific understanding of the eschatological public sphere. He discussed the consequences for the concept of the church in an exchange of letters with Harnack in 1928, which he published in 1932/33 together with an ‘Epilogue’, which he understood as a justification for his conversion.

As a theologian, Peterson continued to be active through lecture tours and publications during the 1930's, particularly in German-speaking countries, with ideology-critical analyses in the form of scriptural and historical interpretations, which, for example, shed new light on the category of the martyr (Witness to the Truth, 1937). In 1935, Peterson examined the "Imperial theology" of the time, which sought proximity to the German Empire and merged Christian hostility towards Jews with anti-Semitic folk ideology. In his study Monotheism as a Political Problem, he sought the ‘elimination of any political theology’ that misused the Christian faith for political purposes. This was also the reason for the break in his friendship with Carl Schmitt, which began in 1925. The book is still the subject of lively debate today. In the same year, the booklet About the Angels (1935) united the liturgical, political and mystical dimensions of Peterson's theology.

Peterson's writings, with their rediscovery of eschatology derived from the New Testament and patristics, were received as groundbreaking at the time, particularly in French theology. The treatise The Church of Jews and Gentiles (1933) influenced Jacques Maritain, among others, who explicitly referred to it in his treatise The Jews among the Nations (1938). Peterson thus indirectly played the role of an inspiration for the change in the Catholic Church's attitude towards Judaism, which was carried out at the Second Vatican Council not least at Maritain's suggestion, although Peterson was accused of ‘subtle anti-Semitism’ for this treatise in particular (Karl Löwith).

Following the example of his former ‘spiritual mentor’ Søren Kierkegaard, Peterson remained an outsider all his life, even — as Karl Barth put it — a ‘marginal figure of this era’, whereby Peterson felt that this not only inward exile was appropriate to the radicalism of Christianity, especially in a world whose domination by capitalism, consumer greed and faith in technology he vehemently criticised throughout his life.

His pre-war studies, collected in Theological Tractates (1951), are still best known today. They exerted a considerable influence on theologians such as Barth, Ernst Käsemann, Heinrich Schlier, Joseph Ratzinger, Jean Daniélou and Yves Congar. The meditative Marginalia on Theology (1956) with essays on the theology of the dress, existentialism and gnosis as well as very personal aphoristic fragments provide insights into the spiritual depth of a thinker who often became enigmatic as he grew older.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Erik Peterson, the International Symposium Erik Peterson: The Theological Presence of an Outsider was held in Rome from 24 to 26 October 2010 under the patronage of the Prefect of the Vatican Library, Cardinal Raffaele Farina, at the Collegio Teutonico and the Augustinian Patristic Pontifical Institute, with the participation of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology. When receiving the participants on 25 October in the Sala Clementina in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute in his address to the work of Peterson, in whose Theological Treatises he found the theology he was looking for in 1951.

Works

Major publications

• Was ist Theologie? (1925)
• Die Kirche (1929)
• Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden. Drei Vorlesungen (1933)
• Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (1935)
• Zeuge der Wahrheit (1937)
• Apostel und Zeuge Christi. Auslegung des Philipperbriefes (1940)
• Theologische Traktate (1951; Theological tractates; edited, translated, and with an introduction by Michael J. Hollerich, 2011)
• Marginalien zur Theologie (1956)
• Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis. Studien und Untersuchungen (1959)
• Das Buch von den Engeln. Stellung und Bedeutung der heiligen Engel im Kultus (1935; The Angels and the Liturgie. The Status and Significance of the Holy Angels in Worship, 1964)

Collected writings

• Ausgewählte Schriften (1994–2010)
  • Vol. 1: Theologische Traktate (1994)
  • Vol. 2: Marginalien zur Theologie und andere Schriften (1995)
  • Vol. 3: Johannesevangelium und Kanonstudien (2003)
  • Vol. 4: Offenbarung des Johannes und politisch-theologische Texte (2004)
  • Vol. 5: Lukasevangelium und Synoptica (2005)
  • Vol. 6: Der Brief an die Römer (1997)
  • Vol. 7: Der erste Brief an die Korinther und Paulus-Studien (2006)
  • Vol. 8: „Heis Theos“. Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur antiken „Ein-Gott“-Akklamation (2012; reprint of the 1926 edition with additions and comments by Christoph Markschies, Henrik Hildebrandt & Barbara Nichtweiß and others)
  • Vol. 9/1: Theologie und Theologen: Texte (2009)
  • Vol. 9/2: Theologie und Theologen: Briefwechsel mit Karl Barth u. a., Reflexionen und Erinnerungen (2009)
  • Special edition: „Ekklesia“. Studien zum altchristlichen Kirchenbegriff (2010)

References

• Alfred Schindler (Hrsg.): Monotheismus als politisches Problem? Erik Peterson und die Kritik der politischen Theologie. Mohn, Gütersloh 1978.
• Barbara Nichtweiß: Erik Peterson. Neue Sicht auf Leben und Werk. (Dissertation). Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1992, 2. Auflage 1994, ISBN 3-451-22869-6 (Online, PDF).
• Barbara Nichtweiß: Erik Peterson. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Band 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4, Sp. 275–281.
• Kurt Anglet: Messianität und Geschichte. Walter Benjamins Konstruktion der historischen Dialektik und deren Aufhebung ins Eschatologische durch Erik Peterson. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-05-002277-2.
• Barbara Nichtweiß: Peterson, Erik. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6, S. 260 f. (Digitalisat).
• Adele Monaci Castagno (Hrsg.): L'Archivio „Erik Peterson“ all'Università di Torino. Saggi critici e Inventario. Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria 2010, ISBN 978-88-7694-260-0.
• Andreas R. Batlogg: Erik Peterson (1890–1960) – ein Outsider. In: Stimmen der Zeit. Online exklusiv, Oktober 2010.[3]
• Stefan Heid: Erik Adolf Peterson. In: Stefan Heid, Martin Dennert (Hrsg.): Personenlexikon zur Christlichen Archäologie. Forscher und Persönlichkeiten vom 16. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert, Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, Bd. 2, S. 1007–1008, ISBN 978-3-7954-2620-0.
• Giancarlo Caronello (Hrsg.): Erik Peterson. Die theologische Präsenz eines Outsiders. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-428-13766-4.
• Michael Meyer-Blanck (Hrsg.): Erik Peterson und die Universität Bonn (= Studien des Bonner Zentrums für Religion und Gesellschaft. Bd. 11). Ergon, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-95650-044-2.
• Roger Mielke: Konkrete Theologie: Kirche, Dogma, Sakrament. Eine Skizze zum Weg Erik Petersons. In: Marco Hofheinz / Hendrik Niether (Hrsg.): Glaubenskämpfe zwischen den Zeiten, theologische, politische und ideengeschichtliche Konzepte in der Weimarer Republik. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2022, (Weimarer Schriften zur Republik; 22), ISBN 978-3-515-13374-6, S. 159–178.

External links

• Works by Erik Peterson at German National Library