Hans Schwarz (theologian)



Hans Schwarz (born January 5, 1939, in Schwabach, Germany) is a German Lutheran theologian.

Life and career
After graduation from the Gymnasium (high school) in Schwabach, Schwarz studied theology and English literature at the Universities of Erlangen and Göttingen. In 1963 he passed the entrance exam of the Lutheran Church of Bavaria and obtained his Dr. theol. degree (summa cum laude) from the University of Erlangen. His thesis was on Das Verständnis des Wunders bei Heim und Bultmann (The Concept of Miracles in the Theologies of Karl Heim and Rudolf Bultmann; Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1966). 1963-1964 he served as vicar at the church seminary in Nuremberg. The following year he obtained a WCC scholarship and a Fulbright Travel Grant to study at the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology in Oberlin, Ohio, US. After a brief vicarage at Sts. Peter and Paul in Erlangen-Bruck he was ordained into the Lutheran Church of Bavaria (1966). Then he started his Habilitation (second thesis) on Luther's understanding of nature facilitated by a research grant of the German Research Society (DFG).

In 1967 he accepted a call to the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, US, now Trinity Lutheran Seminary, first as Instructor for Systematic Theology, then Assistant and Associate Professor and finally as the first Edward C. Fendt Professor of Systematic Theology, a newly endowed chair. In 1981 he followed a call to the Chair of Protestant Theology (Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theological Issues) at the University of Regensburg, Germany. In 2004 he was named Emeritus but continues to be active at the Institute of Protestant Theology at the same university especially supervising doctoral students and maintaining contacts with foreign universities.

Schwarz has been invited to various visiting professorships: 1973/64 at the Augustana Hochschule in Neuendettelsau, Germany, 1974 at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, and 2008 at the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as 1985–2008 at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, SC, US, where he taught every second year for one semester. His intensive contacts with his forty plus former doctoral students on five continents led him to many lecture trips presenting nearly 600 lectures. In his book publications he covered the whole range of systematic theology. His special interest lies in the relationship between theology and the natural sciences, the history of theology especially of the 19th century, and the theologies of the Reformers. For more than forty years he has been a member of the American Academy of Religion where he has served numerous times on steering committees especially of the 19th Century Theology Group and the Lutheran Theologies and Global Lutheranism Group. He was also the president of the Karl-Heim-Gesellschaft (Karl Heim Society) 2000–2014. Since church and theology belong together for him he has served for more than thirty years as a member of the church council of the Regensburg Neupfarrkirche which is also the university church. He preaches there regularly.

Schwarz is on the clergy roster of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and past president of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio.

Honors

 * Medal of Merit: Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia (1999)
 * Dr. h. c. Orthodox Faculty, University of Oradea, Romania (2001)
 * Silver Medal: Monastery Hosios Loukas, Greece (2001)
 * Great Cross of the Patriarch: Romanian Orthodox Church (2003)
 * Dr. h. c. Reformed University Debrecen, Hungary (2006)

Festschriften:
 * Glaube und Denken. Sonderband 1999. Anlässlich des 60. Geburtstages von Hans Schwarz. On the Occasion of the 60th Birthday of Hans Schwarz. Theologie zu Beginn des 3. Jahrtausends im globalen Kontext – Rückblick und Perspektiven. Theology at the Beginning of the 3rd Millennium in a Global Context – Retrospect and Perspectives, ed. David C. Ratke, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999. 340 pp.
 * Glaube und Denken. Sonderband 2004. Festschrift für Hans Schwarz zum 65. Geburtstag. Festschrift for Hans Schwarz on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Die Bedeutung der Theologie für die Gesellschaft. The Significance of Theology for Society, ed. Anna M. Madsen, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004. 485 pp.
 * Doing Theology in a Global Context. A Festschrift for the Rev. Prof. Dr. Hans Schwarz, ed. Craig L. Nessan and Thomas Kothmann, Bangalore, India: Asian Trading Corporation, 2009. 382 pp.