To mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Halle theologian Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), there will be an international, interdisciplinary conference at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg dedicated to the person, work, context, and reception of one of the most influential and productive theologians of the eighteenth century. Semler is considered a co-founder and the central figure in "Neology" and thus of the main branch of the enlightenment theology. During his lifetime he was credited as the father of "historical-critical Bible interpretation" and, later, as central to the "hermeneutical turn", whereby the doctrine of verbal inspiration was supposedly rejected, and the Bible no longer (or only tenuously) regarded as the Word of God, but as a book like any other, and in the theory of accommodation, making space for the Bible to be erroneous. At the same time, he was central to the development of the modern conception of religion, making a sharp practical division between public and private religion, and coining the term, and in many ways the concept, of liberal theology. Beyond university theology, Semler participated in seemingly every central contemporary debate of the eighteenth century, from the 1750s until his death in 1791 and as a teacher and long-time dean of the Theological Faculty of Halle, where he shaped several generations of pastors, theologians and professors who would go on to be key figures in nineteenth century theology.
At the same time, some visions of Semler as an avant-gardist of the Enlightenment or as a protagonist of Liberalism have been called into question by recent research, as some of Semler's positions seem to challenge the claim of liberal, enlightened tolerance, as we understand them. His anti-Jewish theology, his participation in the harsh anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit polemics in Prussia, his sharp rejection of ecumenical and church unionist plans, his hermetic projects, and his defense of Woellner’s Religious Edict not only cast Semler in a different light, but illuminate the ambivalent features of enlightenment debates in the second half of the eighteenth century more broadly. This makes Semler’s work an excellent vantage from which to explore the ways nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of Enlightenment have been projected onto the eighteenth century, concealing ambiguities and "unenlightened"––superstitious, illiberal, state-centric––views among the ostensible founding figures of modernity. The conference is interested therefore not only in Semler's work, but in the intellectual and political contexts in which his work was so influential and, ultimately, fundamental questions about the relationship between Enlightenment and religion, liberalism, tolerance, and anti-Judaism, as well as about pietism and neology. We hope, moreover, to bridge the gaps and differences between contemporary Anglo, German, and other continental traditions of scholarship on enlightenment studies, and we encourage proposals that consciously engage with multiple literatures.
Following Semler's diverse participations and entanglements and their contexts is a highly interdisciplinary undertaking, and we welcome scholars from a wide variety of fields, from biblical hermeneutics, Enlightenment studies, religious studies, the history of liberalism, confessionalism, anti-Judaism, demonology, hermeticism, alchemy, and other fields, not only in Semler’s own period, but in their development in his wake.
An abstract of the presentation (max. 250 words) is requested by 15.09.2024 to thea.sumalvico@theologie.uni-halle.de or michael.lesley@uni-potsdam.de