Rothe, RICHARD, one of the greatest speculative theologians of Germany, was born at Posen, 28th January 1799. At the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin he had among his teachers Daub, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Neander. After a two years' course in the clerical seminary at Wittenberg and a short period of lecturing as privat-docent at Breslau he set out for Rome in December 1823 as chaplain to Bunsen's embassy. In 1828 he accepted a professorship in the Wittenberg seminary, whence in 1839 he migrated to fill a similar position at Heidelberg. In 1849 he obeyed a call to Bonn as professor and university preacher, but in 1854 he returned to Heidelberg as professor of Theology and member of the Oberkirchenrath, and here he died, August 20, 1867. Rothe was one of the noblest types of the theologian that Germany has produced, in his rare combination of simple inward piety with fearless boldness of thought. The patient care he lavished on a wife afflicted with a mental malady, the great personal influence he exerted over his students, his humility, charity, and that magnificent prophetic optimism that already saw the whole universe aglow with the glory of the Redeemer, all testify alike to the beauty and elevation of his character. His conception of the kingdom of God founded by Jesus reminds an English reader of the grand scheme of Hooker in its identification of the religious and moral functions of church and state, in a kind of refined and glorified Erastianism. Indeed the special function of the church will come to an end as soon as the state has become permeated with the religious idea, its purpose being merely that of a temporary instrument in the realisation of this ultimate ideal. The real end of Christianity is to create no hierarchical theocracy, but a spiritualised community with all its social and political functions harmonised with the divine morality. Profane and sacred sciences will at length coalesce, all education will become religious, and the instinct of worship will find nourishment in a regenerated theatre and an elevated art. The work of the church meantime is essentially educative and preparatory—itself a means and not an end—and all its efforts to realise itself as a distinct society are an unfaithfulness to its real principle. The Catholicism of the middle ages was a grand attempt to realise a visible church, but frustrated its highest end because it denaturalised the true social relations when it gave itself a purpose and a policy antagonistic to the state. The Reformation conception of the invisible church was an attempt to avoid the difficulty of the Catholic theory, but it created a purely spiritual community, separated from the ordinary interests of social and national life, and with a fatal tendency to the error of a divorce between religion and morality, the former emphasising the interests of the individual for eternity, the latter relating merely to his social duties here—in themselves considered as of no religious value.
Rothe's theory deals a deathblow to clericalism and all exaggeration of the importance of the external organisation. It may be that it will be for ages yet to come nothing beyond a devout imagination, but at least it is a splendid attempt to realise the Christian dream of the kingdom of God, to carry into effect Christ's distinction between mere outward form and inward spirit, and the eternal fact that it is in life as God Himself has made it that the power and spirit of the gospel ought to manifest itself. This speculative theory is worked out in the first of the three books of Rothe's unfinished work, Die Anfänge der Christlichen Kirche (1837)—the second and third books are historical. His greatest work is his Theologische Ethik (3 vols. 1845-48; 2d ed. completed by Holtzmann from his papers, 5 vols. 1869-71), which supplements the preceding book, being based on the same fundamental identity between religion and morality, the starting-point being the idea of God involved in consciousness, and con- sidered in relation to the world and to man. Here in his pursuit of analogies into the world of science Rothe too often leaves behind him the solid earth of reality, and ventures on hypotheses that are little better than visionary, and, moreover, his style is not seldom abrupt, obscure, and perplexing. His Dogmatik, posthumously edited by Schenkel (3 vols. 1870-71), completes his ethics. Here he distinguishes sharply between Revelation itself and the Bible—its documentary record. The former is not so much a supernatural communication of a religious doctrine as a particular form of God's redemptive activity, strengthening and rectifying the religious consciousness of man disturbed by sin. The true object of Revelation is the knowledge of God; its mode of operation is not magical, but is accompanied by an internal action on the consciousness producing a special receptivity by means of which the external manifestations in history and nature may be understood. It is supernatural in its cause, but natural in its method, although admitting alike of inspiration, of miracle, and of prophecy—not contradictions of nature, but rather inherently constituent elements of a Revelation, subserving higher laws of nature unknown to man's limited faculties, but perfectly homogeneous with a divine order.
During his last ten years, after the formation of the Protestantverein, Rothe took an active part in ecclesiastical affairs, as a leader in the School of Conciliation. He was an admirable preacher, but with characteristic modesty could hardly be induced to publish his sermons. Schenkel edited three volumes in 1869, but took unwarrantable liberties with the text, in the way of modifying the supernaturalism. A fourth and reliable volume was edited by W. Hübbe in 1872.
The Prolegomena which Rothe had contributed to Studien und Kritiken he collected under the title Zur Dogmatik (1863). After his death, besides the books already named, there were edited from his papers Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte, by Weingarten (2 vols. 1875-76); Abendnachrichten über die Pastoralbriefe, by Palmié (2 vols. 1876-77); Der erste Brief Johanns, by Mühlhüsser (1878); Theologische Encyklopädie, by Rupelius (1880); Geschichte der Predigt, by Trümpelmann (1881); Gesammelte Vorträge u. Abhandlungen, by Nippold (1886). Nippold also edited the Stille Stunden (1872; Eng. trans. 1886) and wrote his Life (2 vols. 1873-74).