A Creative and Administrative Actuality: Historical and Theological Analysis of the Orders of Creation in the Ethics of Werner Elert

Abstract

Werner Elert (1885–1954) was widely influential in twentieth-century Lutheranism, a high point of the Erlangen school’s second period of prominence. He wrote extensively on the orders of creation (Schöpfungsordnungen) and used them as part of his inductive theological method to construct Lutheran ethics. The rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism required him and his colleagues to clarify the role of the orders and apply them. This paper examines his articulation of the orders in his major works Morphologie des Luthertums (1931) and The Christian Ethos (Das Christliche Ethos, 1949) and analyses his development of them in practice during the Third Reich. It situates the orders within Elert’s theological system, showing their relationship to law and gospel, the two kingdoms, and the three estates. It argues that the orders give insight into Elert’s reservations about the third use of the law and form an integral part of his ethical framework. Finally, it maintains that Elert’s orders are not culpable of justifying the atrocities of Nazi Germany, but that the National Socialists misappropriated the Lutheran doctrine of the orders for ideological ends.