ABSTRACT
Although Troeltsch’s lectures published as Christian Thought1 are among the last of his writings and might therefore reveal something of the final direction of his thought, they have had remarkably little influence in subsequent theology. In Great Britain, where they had been intended to be delivered, this was partly due to a continuing anti-German sentiment2 and partly because English theology was locked in bitter dispute (as usual) over the doctrine of the Incarnation, particularly after Hastings Rashdall’s ‘heretical’ speech at the Girton Conference of the Churchmen’s Union in 1921.3 Troeltsch’s chiefly ethical concerns in the lectures were far removed from such doctrinal controversy, and seemed unsuited to an English-speaking audience more interested in theological dispute than political reconstruction. In some ways the fate of the lectures is a commentary on English theology’s failure to take the post-war situation seriously. Similarly, in Germany the changed political circumstances of the 1920s, which were marked by a growing radicalism on left and right, were hardly likely to provide a large audience for this type of reflection.4
