one daughter, who later married a Lutheran pastor. The Elert house in Erlangen (Hindenburgstrasse 44) is now a study center for theology students ("Werner-Elert-House") that is owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Theological Work Elert's scholarly life can be divided into five periods. In the first of these periods (1910–21), he devoted himself to the philosophy of history and to a defense of the Christian faith vis-a-vis modern philosophy and theology. In the second period (1922–32), he worked on a two-volume study of Lutheranism. The third period (1932–40), which coincided with the regime of Adolf Hitler, was devoted to issues in dogmatics and matters of church and state. The fourth period (1940–49) was marked by his study of Lutheran ethics. In the final period of his life (1950–54), he worked on issues in the history of Christian dogma, particularly relating to Eastern Orthodox christology and eucharistic fellowship. His first major work, Der Kampf um das Christentum [the struggle over Christianity], published in 1921, offers a critique of the synthesis that developed in the nineteenth century between liberal Protestant theology (especially through the influence of Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, and Friedrich Schleiermacher) and modern German "culture" (Kultur). As such, the book provides a critical perspective on these thinkers as well as many others. In Elert's view, modern theology must return to an independent position that maintains its critical distance from all influences that are foreign to the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. Elert was convinced that modern Western culture is in a state of decline (cf. Oswald Spengler) and stands under the judgment of God. The final outcome of any attempt to maintain a synthesis between Christian theology and modern culture "would be the death of the former." "Only when Christianity becomes entirely separate again for a moment, i.e., entirely free from the present 'culture,' will it demonstrate its power for producing a new thing, something it has done more than once in its history." Christian theology will only flourish when it maintains its "diastasis" from modernity. If Christianity is not disentangled "from a decaying culture," it will be "dragged down into the whirlpool." Following earlier theologians in the Erlangen tradition (e.g., F. H. R. Frank, Ludwig Ihmels), Elert stressed the importance of understanding the connection between the historic biblical witness to Christ and the immediacy and "certainty" of the individual Christian's faith in God through the gospel. Elert's