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Johann Sebastian Drey. Praelectiones Dogmaticae (1815-1834). Gehalten zu Ellwangen und Tübingen. Edited and Introduction by Max Seckler. 2 volumes. (Tübingen: Francke Verlag. 2003. Pp. xviii, 775. euro129.)
Ever since the Reformation, German Catholics have had to struggle to maintain their theological authenticity as a minority group in the German cultural stream that ultimately matured in the second Reich. Catholic theologians could maintain a defensive position through a rigorous adherence to Scholastic and subsequently Neo-Scholastic patterns of thought. They could also create a way for their faith to engage their culture in a more positive fashion. The Tübingen School of Theology adopted this latter impetus and looked for the positive contribution that a historicist, romantic, and idealistic culture could provide. Drey was the father of this school, which included Johann Adam Mohler, Franz Anton Staudenmaier, and Johann Kuhn. Subsequently, this nineteenth-century school of thought nurtured such theologians as Hermann Schell, Karl...