RITSCHLIANISM
86
RITSCHLIANISM
Rite, are drifting into modern Protestantism.
Several of them have become members of the Epis-
copal Church, and they are looked after by Dr.
Abraham Yohannan, an'Armenian from Persia, now
a minister in the Episcopal Chm-ch and lectm-er on
modern Persian at Columbia University. They have
no church or chapel of their own.
(2) Syro-Catholic Rite.— This rite is professed by those S\Tiac Cliristians who were subjects of the an- cient Patriarchate of Antioch; these are spread throughout the plains of Syria and Western Mesopo- tamia, whereas the Maronites live principally on Mount Lebanon and the sea coast of Syria (see Asia; E.a.stern Churches). The Syriac Mass and liturgj- is, like the Maronite (which is but a variation of it)," the Liturgv of St. James, Apostle and Bishop of Jerusalem. P'or this reason, but principally for the reason that Jacob Baradaeus and the greater part of the Syriac Church (see Barad.eus, Jacob) em- braced the Monophysite heresy of Eutyches (see RIoNOPHYSiTES AND Monophysitism), the schis- matic branch of this rite are called Jacobites, although they call themselves Suriani or Syrians. Thus we have in the tliree Syrian rites the historic remem- brance of the three greatest heresies of the early Church after it had become well-developed. Nes- torians and Chaldeans represent Nestorianism and the return to Catholicism; Jacobites and Syro-Catholics represent Monophysitism and the return to Cathol- icism; the Maronites represent a vanished Mono- thehtism now wholly Catholic (see Monothelitism AND MoNOTHELiTEs). The Syro-Catholics like the Maronites vary the Ordinary of their Mass by a large number of anaphoras or canons of the Mass, con- taining changeable forms of the consecration service. The Syro-Catholics confine themselves to the an- aphoras of St. John the Evangelist, St. James, St. Peter, St. John Chrysostom, St. Xystus the Pope of Rome, St. Matthew, and St. Basil; but the schis- matic Jacobites not only use these, but have a large number of others, some of them not yet in print, amounting perhaps to thirty or more (see Syria; Syrian Rite, E.-vst). The epistles, gospels, and many well-known prayers of the Mass are said in Arabic in- stead of the ancient Syriac. The form of their church vestments is derived substantially from the Greek or Byzantine Rite. Their church hierarchy in union with the Holy See consists of the Syrian Patriarch of An- tioch with three archbishops (of Bagdad, Damascus, and Horns) and five bishops (of Aleppo, Beirut, Gezireh, Mardin-Diarbekir, and Mossul). The num- ber of Syro-Catholics is about 25,000 families, and of the Jacobites about 80,000 to S.5,000 persons.
There are about 60 persons of the Syro-Catholic Rite in the eastern part of the United States, of whom forty live in Brooklyn, New York. They are mostly from the Diocesf; of Aleppo, and their emigration thither began only about five years ago. They have organized a church, although there is but one priest of thf'ir rite in the United States, Rev. Paul Kassar from Ale})[)o, an alumnus of the Propaganda at Rome. He i.H a mission priest engagfid in looking after his c<juntr>'men and resides in BrfKjklyn, but he is only here upon an ext<!nded leave of absence from the diocjisa. There are alsfj sfjme thirty or forty Syro- JacjbiUjs in the Unitc;d States; they are mostly from Mardin, Aleppo, and Northern Syria, and have no priest or chapel of their own.
(3j Coptic Rite. — There is only a handful of Copts in this country — in New York City perhaps a dozen individuals. Oriental theatrical pieces, in which an Eastern setting is required, has attracted some of them thither, principally from Egypt. They have no priest, either Catnolic or Orthodox, and no place of worship. As to their Church and its organization, see Eabtehn Churches; Egypt: V. Coptic Church. Andkew J. Shipman.
Ritschlianism, a jxHuhar conception of the nature
and scope of Cliristianity, widely held in modern
Protestantism, especially in Germany. Its founder
was the Protestant theologian, Albrecht Ritschl (b.
at Berlin, 25 March, 1822; d. at Gottingen, 20 March,
1889). Having completed his studies in the gymna-
sium at Stettin, where his father resided as general
superintendent of Pomerania, Ritschl attended the
University of Bonn, and was for a time captivated by
the "Biblical supernaturalism " of his teacher, K. J.
Nitzsch. Mental dissatisfaction caused him to leave
Bonn in 1841, and he continued his studies under
Julius M tiller and Tholuck in the University of Halle.
Disabused here also as to the teachings of his pro-
fessors, he sought and found peace in the reconcilia-
tion doctrine of the Tiibingen professor, Ferdinand
Christian Baur, through whose writings he was won
over to the philosophy of Hegel. On 21 May, 1843,
he graduated Doctor of Philosophy at Halle with the
dissertation, "Expositio doctrina) Augustini de
creatione mundi, peccato, gratia" (Halle, 1843).
After a long residence in his parents' house at Stettin,
he proceeded to Tubingen, and there entered into
personal intercourse with the celebrated head of the
(later) Tubingen School, Ferdinand Christian Baur.
He here wrote, entirely in the spirit of this theologian,
"Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonische
Evangelium des Lukas" (Tubingen, 1846), wherein
he attempts to prove that the apocryphal gospel
of the Gnostic Marcion forms the real foundation of
the Gospel of St. Luke. Having qualified as Privat-
docent at Bonn on 20 June, 1846, he was appointed
professor extraordinary of Evangelical theology on
22 December, 1852, and ordinary professor on 10 July,
1859. Meanwhile he had experienced a radical
change in the earlier views which he had formed under
Baur's influence; this change removed him farther
and farther from the Tubingen School.
In 1851 he had withdrawn his hypothesis concerning the origin of the Gospel of St. Luke as untenable, and in 1856 he had a public breach with Baur. Hence- forth Ritschl was resolved to tread his own path. In the second edition of his "Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche" (Bonn, 1857; 1st ed., 1850), he rejected outright Baur's sharp distinction between St. Paul and the original Apostles — between Paul- inism and Petrinism — by maintaining the thesis that the New Testament contains the religion of Jesus Christ in a manner entirely uniform and disturbed by no internal contradictions. At Gottingen, whither he was called at lOaster, 1864, his peculiar ideas first found full realization in his "Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung" (3 vols., Bonn, 1870-4; 4th ed., 1895-1903). His practical conception of Christianity was described first in his lecture on "Christliche VoUkommenheit" (Gottingen, 1874; 3rd ed., 1902) and then in his "Unterricht in der christlichen Religion" (Bonn, 1875; 6th ed., 1903), which was intended as a manual for the gymnasium, h\ii proved very unsatisfactory for prac- tical purposes. In his small, but inii)ortant, work, " Theologie und Metaphysik" (Bonn, 18S1; 3rd ed., Gottingen, 1902), he dc^nies the influence of phi- losophy in the formation of theology. In addition to numerous smaller writings, which were re-edited after his death under the title "Gcsammelte Aufsatze" (2 vols., Gottingen, 1893-0), lie coinjjiled a "Ge- Bchichte des Pietismus" (3 vols., Bonn, 1880-6), based upon a wide study of the sources. Pietism itself, as it appeared in Calvinistic and Lutheran circles during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he con- demns as an abortion of modern Protestantism caused by the false Catholic ideal of piety. His last and incomplete work, "Fides implicita, oder eine Unter- Buchung iiber K6hlerglauben, Wissen und Glauben, fJlauben und Kirche" (Bonn, 1890), appeared .shortly after his death. After 1888 he suffered from heart
