TROELTSCH, ERNST

born Feb. 17, 1865, Haunstetten, near Augsburg, Bavaria died Feb. 1, 1923, Berlin German scholar of considerable influence on younger theologians of his time for his insistence that the church reexamine its claims to absolute truth. Many of Troeltsch's publications, which span the disciplines of theology, social history and theory, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of history, were integrated into his best known work, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1912; The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 1931). Additional reading A brief autobiography of Troeltsch, Meine Bcher, is included in vol. 4 of his collected works, Gesammelte Schriften (192225); biographical material may be found in Walter Koehler, Ernst Troeltsch (1941). A full bibliography and a list of Troeltsch's works with translations are contained in B.A. Reist, Toward a Theology of Involvement: The Thought of Ernst Troeltsch (1966). R.S. Sleigh, The Sufficiency of Christianity (1923), is a useful book for the theologically interested reader; also John Powell Clayton (ed.), Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology (1976), a collection of essays with an excellent bibliography. Troeltsch's social philosophy is well presented in W.F. Kasch, Die Sozialphilosophie von Ernst Troeltsch (1963).