Hans Iwand

Family

Iwand was born in Schreibendorf, Silesia, German Empire (modern Pisary, Lower Silesian Voivodeship), the son of pastor Otto Iwand and his wife Lydia née Herrmann. In 1927 Hans married Ilse Ehrhardt; the couple had five children. Hans Iwand is buried in the village of Beienrode, Königslutter.

Iwand's youngest daughter, the Veronika Geyer-Iwand (1943-1997), a popular religion teacher and the mayor of Beienrode, married pastor Klaus Geyer (1941-2003). The son-in-law was convicted in 1998 of manslaughter in her brutal murder (July 25, 1997); Geyer was the only German theologian ever to have been jailed after committing such a crime.

Nazi period

In November 1934 Iwand became professor of New Testament studies at the Herder Institute in Riga, Latvia. Because of his participation in the Kirchenkampf struggle between the Nazi-backed so-called Deutsche Christen church and its oppositional Bekennende Kirche ("confessing church") he was forced out of his teaching position and from 1935 to 1937 headed illegal seminaries for training pastors in Blöstau, East Prussia (modern Vishniovka, Guryevsk, in the Kaliningrad enclave of Russia) and Jordan, Brandenburg (now in Poland). In 1936 a Reichsredeverbot (prohibition of speech, i.e. a gag order) was imposed on him. Following the closure of these eastern seminaries he opened another one in January 1938 in Dortmund, an act for which he was imprisoned for four months. Upon his release he took over the parish of the Marienkirche, Dortmund, where he remained until the war ended.

Professorship in Göttingen and Bonn

After World War II, Iwand was professor of systematic theology at the University of Göttingen, where he worked closely with Ernst Wolf. He was also at this time a council member of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the principal author of Darmstädter Wort zum politischen Weg unseres Volkes, a statement on relations between church and state after the end of Nazism and during the tensions of the Cold War.

In 1952 he moved to the University of Bonn, where he remained until his death. In Beienrode he founded the Haus der helfenden Hände ("house of helping hands") to ease the plight of refugees from the former East Germany, later working for mutual understanding among Germans and the peoples of Eastern Europe. The building is now used as a care facility for 80 senior citizens. His archived documents from this time are now kept in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz.

In 1956 he was co-founder of the German social democratic publication Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, a monthly magazine covering German and international politics, and in 1958, together with Werner Schmauch (1905–1964) and Czech theologian Josef Hromádka (1889–1969), Iwand was a co-founder of the Christliche Friedenskonferenz (Christian Peace Conference) in Prague.

Teachings

Following Luther, Iwand's central starting point was: "How far can man 'decide' when it comes to the question of God?" [2, p. 295], under the constraints of human volition. Iwand believed: "Jesus Christ cannot be known as a saviour and redeemer without the spirit of God, who glorified him to us." [Ibid.] Therewith, however, the possibility of people's free choice of the people is removed, as both ideas "cannot stand on a single board." This position has far-reaching consequences. For Iwand it concerns God-given "true faith", a correct understanding of law and gospel, sin and grace, faith and works, and God's righteousness. "Gospel" is "God's grace today", while the primary function of "law" is to highlight sin. Christ is "life itself", the fulfilment of what the law commands, and the relationship of faith and works is that while man can do good, he is not himself good. Iwand here refers to the basic Protestant Reformation positions Sola fide and Sola gratia. The Reformation view is that man is justified not through works but by faith alone.

Besides the efficacy of the God's word, there is also the certainty of faith. The truth of God is more certain than life and all experience [3, p. 316]. The believer sees in Scripture the clarity of God himself, "which the face of Jesus Christ reflects" [3, p. 318]. All the mysteries of the immanent God "lose their stings when we read between the lines to cognize God through the face of Jesus Christ, who through suffering and death has redeemed us to the eternal counsel of his father" [3, p. 303]. Iwand inspired and later edited the much-used Göttinger Predigtmeditationen ("Göttingen sermon meditations"). Reflecting on God's word is the focus here. "We must with our work assist all those who now are knocking where once, by the grace of God, it will be opened, as the promise was given to us. The letter of Scripture is, naturally, this place where we should and must knock" [5, p. 94], as Iwand wrote in an early foreword.