Today marks the 118th anniversary of the birth of Edmund Schlink (1903-1984), one of the most important Christian theologians and ecumenists of the last century. After earning a doctorate in psychology (Marburg, 1927), he completed a doctorate in theology (Muenster, 1931), under the direction of Karl Barth. (Between these two doctorates he had suffered a crisis a faith, which led him to work for a year as a field hand on a Silesian farm. There he encountered Pietistic Christians, who helped him through that period of spiritual struggle and renewal.)
He submitted his theological Habilitationsschrift (yet another doctoral dissertation) to the faculty at Giessen in 1934.
For the past decade, Schlink's work has been my main scholarly interest. I am currently editing and translating his 804-page Ecumenical Dogmatics, his magnum opus, which will be published late this year or early next year by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (which recently merged with Brill).
In honor of Dr. Schlink's birthday today, here is an excerpt from his classic 1957 essay on "The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue":
Among the various forms of prayer doxology assumes a special place in view of its pronominal structure.
In doxology believers do not ask God anything for themselves, nor do they ask God to act for other people, but they only worship God. While the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer pray for the coming of the kingdom, the doxology of the congregation confesses “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.” Doxology is all about the praise-filled recognition of the reality of God. God can thus be addressed in the second person—as, for example, in the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer. But, as a rule, doxology speaks of God in the third person: God is not addressed as a Thou but praised as a He. When we translate the original Greek “Glory be to God on high…” (Lk. 2.14) or “to him be glory forever and ever” (Rom. 11.36), that does not imply that God is first granted “glory” or majesty through the doxology. Instead, the doxology “gives” God the “glory” that God already has. More precisely, it praises the majesty that God has and is, and indeed has and is even if a person does not give God the honor. Doxology is the reflection of the eternal divine majesty in the praise of human beings.
Doxology is based on God’s act of salvation. Because God has accomplished his action for human beings, in fact for the world, God is praised by the believer. This is quite clear in the praise psalms in the Old Testament: Because God, who is enthroned on high, has shown mercy in his act of salvation in history for those who are nobodies, he is praised without end as the Lord, who graciously stoops down from on high and who indeed is without end majestically sublime and merciful, gracious, kind, and lowly. Adoration arises from the acknowledgment of God’s historical act. This praise is the unfolding—in the literal theo-logical sense—of gratitude for God’s action in that the psalmist’s gratitude breaks out into hymnic praise and adoration of the eternal God himself....
Likewise, doxologies found in the New Testament live from God’s act of salvation, from the act of salvation in Christo which, despite the Parousia yet to come, is already entirely fulfilled. The congregation on earth may now already thus participate in the songs of victory of the glorified, who celebrate the defeat of all the powers hostile to God and the fulfillment of God’s lordship, and who praise God and the Lamb. Because doxology is grounded in God’s act of salvation, the latter is also referred to frequently and explicitly in the words of New Testament doxology. But their use is not essential to the wording of the doxology, and even when they are explicitly mentioned in a doxology they appear there more as the occasion and basis for the doxology than as constituting its actual content (compare, for example, Rev. 4.11; 19.1ff.). Doxology is ultimately about God himself—about God on the basis of his mighty acts toward us and toward the world—yet about God who does not fully disclose himself in these acts but does them in the freedom of the almighty and loving Lord, who already existed before his acts and who will continue to be after them, who is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Doxology is not merely about God’s action in history, but about God himself, about his eternal reality. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Is. 6.3). This statement is valid regardless of whether or not the earth gives glory to the Lord. “Holy, holy, holy is God the Lord, the almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Rev. 4.8). “To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. 1.17). “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever” (Rev. 7.12). The central concern in these and many similar statements is the acknowledgment of God as God, who forever and ever and who before his mighty acts of salvation and after them is the same holy, almighty, glorious and wise one. Statements about God’s being, essence, and attributes thus occur in the etymological unfolding of doxology that praises God’s eternal all-history-encompassing aseity. The same holds true for the adoration of Jesus Christ, who is praised not only as the crucified and risen one but also as the eternal who encompasses time, and thereby also as the pre-existent one, who, like the Father, is the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
--Edmund Schlink, "The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue," in Ecumenical and Confessional Writings, vol. 1 (The Coming Christ and Church Traditions; After the Council), ed. Matthew L. Becker, trans. Matthew L. Becker and Hans G. Spalteholz (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 70-71.
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