The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Gogarten, Friedrich
1887–1968, German theologian. He was professor of theology at the Univ. of Jena from 1927 until 1933, when he began to teach at the Univ. of Göttingen. He adopted the anti-idealism of Søren Kierkegaard, and his work is close to that of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann. Using Barth’s dialectical theology, he formulated a fresh interpretation of culture and history but from a Lutheran rather than Calvinist point of view. In his works Politische Ethik (1932) and Der Mensch Zwischen Gott und Welt (1952) he is concerned with the problem of humanity’s relation to his religion and to the state. In his chief work, Entmythologisierung und die Kirche (1953; tr. Demythologization and the Church, 1955), he examines and expands on Bultmann’s attempt to remove the elements of myth from the New Testament.
