Paul Althaus

Who was Paul Althaus?

Paul Althaus was a German Lutheran theologian, son of Adolf Paul Johannes Althaus. He was born in Obershagen in the Province of Hanover, and he died in Erlangen. He held various pastorates from 1914 to 1925, when he was appointed associate professor of practical and systematic theology at the University of Göttingen, becoming full professor two years later. Althaus was moderately critical of Lutheran Orthodoxy and evangelical-leaning Neo-Lutheranism. He termed it a “mistake” to “defend the authenticity and infallibility of the Bible.”

In 1933, when a professor of theology at the University of Erlangen, and probably the leading Luther authority of his day, he welcomed the emergence to power of Adolf Hitler - "Our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God".