Chemical God

Of Lutherans and limits

Do you have to believe in God to be a Protestant minister? The answer, as in so many cases these days, is yes and no. Germany, in particular, has been a veritable font of Protestant doubt for decades. But last week, deciding it had to draw the line somewhere, West Germany's United Evangelical Lutheran Church, which includes half the nation's Protestants, unfrocked the Rev. Paul Schulz for heresy.

Schulz holds a doctor of theology degree from Erlangen University, and for years was a Lutheran pastor at St. Jacobi Church in Hamburg. Since 1971 he has preached that the existence of a personal God is "a comforting invention of human beings." Schulz also wrote a book, Is God a Mathematical Formula?, and, in answer to the title question, he answered no but declared that God emanates somehow from "physical and chemical processes." Prayer? Mere "self-reflection." Life after death? Wishful thinking. Jesus? A normal man with good things to say who was later glorified into the Son of God by early Christians.

The church hardly rushed to judgment. After years of official "discussions" that proved fruitless, formal proceedings against him began in 1976. At the hearings, hardly a trial, Schulz played to a sometimes cheering gallery of theology students. By the seventh and final session this Jan. 23 Schulz was accusing his accusers: "You are upholding your old notions of God so you can uphold your own institutional power." No leading West German theologian championed his cause.

Reluctantly, the examining commission, led by Bishop Eduard Lohse, forbade Schulz to preach or administer the sacraments. He is expected to receive a $12,000-a-year stipend if he shuns anti-church activities. The commission insisted that it still favors "a wide spectrum" of individual interpretation. Indeed, Schulz was only the third clergyman in this century to be acted against by German Protestants for doctrinal reasons. Schulz's notions are not new, or even rare. But churchmen who reach such views customarily leave the church or at least stop ministering to a congregation. Schulz's tragedy, noted the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, lay in his refusal "to recognize the contradiction between his teachings and exercising his office."

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