Rudolph Sohm

Gotthold Julius Rudolph Sohm (29 October 1841 in Rostock – 16 May 1917 in Leipzig) was a German jurist and Church historian as well as a theologian.

The Early Church, he argued, was ruled not by legal concepts but by a power he called "charisma" (from the Greek 'charis'), which is "a gift of grace" bestowed by the Holy Spirit.

[4] In his work Sohm explored how the charismatically based Jesus movement of the Early Church changed into the legalistic bureaucracy of Roman Catholicism.

[5] Sohm was one of the committee of 22 members, comprising not only jurists but also representatives of financial interests and of the various ideological currents of the time, who compiled a second draft of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (German Civil Code) which was accepted by the Reichstag in 1896.

Also in 1896, with Friedrich Naumann and Caspar René Gregory, he founded the National-Social Association (National-Sozial Partei), based on Socialist Christianity.