To understand Overbeck’s radical theology, we must begin with his extreme disdain for what the church had become and what theology had done to the faith. Overbeck’s revile for theology, qua science of the church, stems from what he sees as the misappropriation of the pure spirit of the church in its incipient and apostolic age.

Overbeck was working within a theologically polarized landscape and this must certainly be considered when critiquing his account of theology. Text-critical approaches to philology had spurred the alleged liberalization of theology. The actual belief in the historic figure of Jesus of Nazareth had been transformed into the most likely scenario of the early church’s mythology. David Strauss’ contemporaneous work, The Old Faith and the New, sought to dispel the mythos of Christianity and had called for theology to be a scientific enterprise of sorts.

Overbeck took a hostile disposition toward the majority liberal theology pervading the university faculties. But he was equally dissenting toward the old conservative faith as well. He was a radical; a third party in a theological/cultural war of extremes. But he was an extremist as well. He had rejected the church and its authority because of peculiar doctrines he had developed and held exclusively.

The binding nature of Overbeck’s doctrine could be summarized as this: world-fleeing. For Overbeck, the nature of the faith is quiescent in the earliest kernel of the church. The church was in its burgeoning apostolic expansion when Christianity was at its most spiritual stage of development. The characteristic feature of that spiritual Christianity was that adherents held to a world-fleeing mentality (as opposed to the ensuing Alexandrian mentality).

This world-fleeing mentality was solely due to the anticipated return of the Messiah. Christians were fervently spreading the faith, proclaiming “Christ as Lord” rather than particular doctrines. These early Christians were utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit to guide them until Christ’s returned. What interested Overbeck is why the early church did not fall apart when the return of Christ grew more unlikely over time? To this he writes:

We must emphatically deny… that original Christianity’s expectation of the early return of Christ after its factual nonfufillment in the church only stepped into the background, and so we also especially deny that the world-fleeing character of original Christianity disappeared in the ancient church. Otherwise one must forever remain with the unsolvable enigma that a belief whose whole view of the world depended on its physical fulfillment was not dashed to pieces on its nonfulfillment.

What happened when Jesus did not actually return? According to Overbeck, their world-fleeing mentality was transformed into asceticism in the church; which is just another type of world-fleeing mentality. Theology, which is a questionable enterprise for Overbeck, proceded from the ennui of the church trying to justify itself to different cultures upon the ‘nonfulfillment’ of The Return.

The spiritual thrust of the apostolic church left in nonfulfillment had to be parlayed into a new form. That new form became dogma, per Overbeck. This is what he refers to as the Alexandrian shift in the church. Again, Overbeck sees this move into formal exposition of doctrine as having a fundamentally negative effect on the spirituality of the early church. Even more, the “apologetic theology” of the church was the death’s nail for any hope of a faithfully spiritual church. Clement of Alexandria is symptomatic of this apologetic bent, where he tried to reconcile the Greek philosophers against Old Testament theology. For Overbeck, the question became, “How could the church recapture its essential world-fleeing mentality when the apologists were constantly seeking to tie the church to the world in arguing from pagan contexts in order to justify the religion?”

From there, the church entered a “paganizing” phase where art, beauty and all cultural phenomena were recaptured for the life of the church. Ecclesiastical ritual absconded true world-fleeing spirituality. The world-denying character of the faith is even used to fund the martyrdom of Christians, which is yet another avenue of refusing identification with this world.

In what appears ironic, Overbeck mirrors Nietzsche’s early attitude toward the explanatory power of art beyond Alexandrian explication. The problem with dogma is that propositional analysis cannot capture the essential faith without remainder. Overbeck says in a lecture on John’s Gospel, “In every century where Christian faith has been a living faith, church history is full of holy poetry.” For Overbeck, the subduing and domestication of the arts for ritual and instantiation of the church’s novel Alexandrian doctrine runs counter to the world-fleeing spirit of the apostolic spirituality. But Overbeck believes that the nature of the world-fleeing church must be unapologetically (in both senses of the word) expressed. That expression, since it is attempting to express essential spirituality, will have a heightened sense of “holy poetry”.

Any attempt by the church to affirm the world is seen as an attempt to rob Christianity of its very soul. “The matter is different only when one realizes that world-denial is the inmost soul of Christianity, that for Christianity the world is no longer a possible and worthy place for religion.” Not even the Reformation is spared from his rebuke where Overbeck says, “It allowed the use and enjoyment of a world it could not annihilate… .”

In the stead of popular theologies, Overbeck commends a new theology: critical theology. “Critical theology will prevent such theologies from dragging through the world an unreal thing they call Christianity, from which has been taken its soul. Namely the denial of world.” Overbeck sets out to describe a new field that will study historic Christianity historically. It will be strictly historical, meaning that it will focus only on what Christianity was and thereby is not restricted to interacting with what Christianity is.

Franz Overbeck brings a unique understanding of essential Christianity to 19th century German scholarship. Essential Christianity, per Overbeck, centers on the denial of this world in favor of the immanent return of Christ. That essential spirituality was perverted as world-denial took on the form of dogma, asceticism, and martyrdom. Further, every act of apologetic engagement of the world, commandeering art, and/or development of ritual further instantiated the church’s identification with the very world from which it ought to take flight.

• Franz Overbeck, On the Christianity of Theology, Translated by John Elbert Wilson (Pickwick Publications: San Jose, CA, 2002).
• James Arwin Overbeck (no relation to Franz), “History Against Theology: An Analysis of the Life and Thought of Franz Overbeck.” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1975).