Adolf Schlatter (16 August 1852 – 19 May 1938) was a well-known Swiss-born German Protestant theologian and professor specialising in the New Testament and systematics at Greifswald, Berlin and Tübingen.

[1] Schlatter, born in St. Gallen to a pietistic preacher, studied philosophy and theology in Basel and Tübingen between 1871 and 1875, gaining his post-doctoral teaching qualification (Habilitation) in 1880.

From 1897, he was co-editor, alongside Hermann Cremer, of a magazine called Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie (Articles for the Promotion of Christian Theology).

To Schlatter’s surprise a storm of protest arose among his Berlin colleagues, who felt that the declaration was damaging to the status and high honor of the professional office.

Even after a lively faculty meeting, however, Schlatter could not bring himself to regret his involvement in the convention saying: ‘For me the choice stands sharply defined: God’s believing community or professional colleagues?

His approach to faith, science and biblical criticism was a breath of fresh air for numerous theology students, giving them hope in an otherwise anti-supernatural intellectual environment, where all that remained of the New Testament was a "historical Jesus" offering the highest moral ideals for society.

According to Stephen Haynes, “If a dominant characteristic of interwar religious discourse was its penchant for stigmatizing the Nazi enemy with a ‘Jewish’ stain, then anti-Nazi authors knew instinctively that jewifying National Socialism would strengthen their case with the average German.”[4] Schlatter's tract firmly situates him in the anti-Jewish spirit of the period, and on pp.

Schlatter also conveyed a sense of the ‘authority’ of Scripture which diverged significantly from the prevailing liberal-Protestant view of the Bible as a ‘source-book for religious ideas’ to be found not in but behind the text ... one must recognise it also in Bonhoeffer's later life, where it appears at the heart of his faith that results from having been captivated and convinced by the word of Jesus ... it was the Reformed professor of New Testament who implanted it in the young student to the extent that it became an essential part of Bonhoeffer's epistemology and, finally, of his whole theological existence.

[11]Primary source research reveals Schlatter's close personal and professional relationship to Gerhard Kittel, whose anti-Semitic publications forced his removal from his teaching position following the war.