Ferdinand Christian Baur

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Ferdinand Christian Baur
Tübingen School

Ferdinand Christian Baur (21 June 1792 – 2 December 1860) was a German

higher criticism
of biblical and related texts.

Adolf Hilgenfeld followed Baur's lead and edited the Tübingen School's journal, though he was less radical than Baur.[1] A patristic scholar and philosopher at Tübingen, Albert Schwegler, gave the School's theories their most vigorous expression.[2] The School's influence peaked in the 1840s, but was waning by the early twentieth century.[3]

Baur's views were radical, but "one thing is certain: New Testament study, since his time, has had a different colour" (H.S. Nash). He had a number of followers, who in many cases modified his positions, and the groundwork laid by Baur continues to be built upon in the twenty-first century.

Early years

Baur was born at

Friedrich Schelling were creating a wide and deep impression. In 1817 Baur returned to the theological seminary at Blaubeuren as professor. This move marked a turning-point in his life, for he now set to work on the investigations on which his reputation rests. He had already, in 1817, written a review of G. Kaiser's Biblische Theologie for Bengel's Archiv für Theologie (ii. 656); its tone was moderate and conservative.[4]

Early works

When, a few years after his appointment at Blaubeuren, he published his first important work, Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des Altertums ("Symbol and mythology: the natural religion of Antiquity", 1824–1825), it became evident that he had made a deeper study of

mythology and the history of dogma. Das manichäische Religionssystem ("The Manichaean religious system") appeared in 1831, Apollonius von Tyana in 1832, Die christliche Gnosis ("Christian Gnosis") in 1835, and Über das Christliche im Platonismus oder Socrates und Christus ("On Christianity in Platonism: Socrates and Christ") in 1837. As Otto Pfleiderer (Pflederer 1890 p. 285) observes, "the choice not less than the treatment of these subjects is indicative of the large breadth of view and the insight of the historian into the comparative history of religion."[4]

Simon Magus and Paul

Ferdinand Christian Baur

Baur rested his ideas about the New Testament on the

Marcion was a leader of the Pauline sect in its survival in the 2nd century, using only the Pauline Gospel, St. Luke (in its original form), and the Epistles of St. Paul (without the Pastoral Epistles). The Clementine literature had its first origin in the Apostolic Age, and belonged to the original Jewish, Petrine, legal Church. It is directed wholly against St. Paul and his sect. Simon Magus
never existed; it is a nickname for St. Paul. The Acts of the Apostles, compiled in the 2nd century, have borrowed their mention of Simon from the earliest form of the Clementines. Catholicism under the presidency of Rome was the result of the adjustment between the Petrine and Pauline sections of the Church in the second half of the 2nd century. The Fourth Gospel is a monument of this reconciliation, in which Rome took a leading part, having invented the fiction that both Peter and Paul were the founders of her Church, both having been martyred at Rome, and on the same day, in perfect union.

Throughout the middle of the 19th century this theory, in many forms, was dominant in Germany. The demonstration, mainly by English scholars, of the impossibility of the late dates ascribed to the New Testament documents (four Epistles of St. Paul and the Apocalypse were the only documents generally admitted as being of early date), and the proofs of the authenticity of the Apostolic Fathers and of the use of St. John's Gospel by Justin, Papias, and Ignatius, gradually brought Baur's theories into discredit.[

Adolf Hilgenfeld may be considered the last survivor (died 1907). He was induced to admit that Simon Magus was a real personage, though he persisted that in the Clementines he is meant for St. Paul. In 1847 Hilgenfeld dated the original nucleus of the Clementine literature
(Kerygmata Petrou) soon after the Jewish war of 70; successive revisions of it were anti-Basilidian, anti-Valentinian, and anti-Marcionite respectively. Baur placed the completed form, ‘‘H’’, soon after the middle of the 2nd century, and Schliemann (1844) agreed, placing ‘‘R’’, as a revision, between 211 and 230. Other writers dated both ‘‘H’’ and ‘‘R’’ to between the 2nd and 4th centuries:

Hegel's influence

Meantime Baur had exchanged one master in philosophy for another, Schleiermacher for

Early Christian
historiography.

Pauline epistles

See also:
Paul of Tarsus and Judaism

The theory is further developed in a later work (1835, the year in which

Marcionites, of the 2nd century, and consequently that the Pastoral Epistles were produced in the middle of the 2nd century in opposition to Gnosticism.[4]

He next proceeded to investigate other

Petrinist.[4]

Early Christian conflicts

We are rich in our Christian faith, we become poor if we enter into a compromise with anti-Trinitarianism in any form. F. C. Baur, the father of the Tubingen School, who cannot be accused of being a friend of traditional orthodoxy, was correct in his statement that Christianity would have lost its character as the universal religion of mankind if Arianism had been triumphant at Nicea.

— Modern Anti-Trinitarianism and Islam, 1912

Baur was prepared to apply his theory to the whole of the

Matthew bears the closest relationship to this original Gospel (Urevangelium); the Pauline Luke is later and arose independently; Mark represents a still later development according to Baur; the account in John is idealistic: it "does not possess historical truth, and cannot and does not really lay claim to it."[5]

Baur's theory starts with the supposition that Christianity was gradually developed out of

James and John, and Paul the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and this struggle continued down to the middle of the 2nd century. In short, the conflict between Petrinism and Paulinism is, as Karl Schwarz puts it, the key to the literature of the 1st and 2nd centuries.[6]

Theology

Baur was a theologian and historian as well as a Biblical critic. As early as 1834 he published a strictly theological work, Gegensatz des Katholicismus und Protestantismus nach den Prinzipien und Hauptdogmen der beiden Lehrbegriffe, a strong defence of Protestantism on the lines of Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre, and a vigorous reply to J. Möhler's Symbolik (1833). This was followed by his larger histories of dogma, Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis auf die neueste Zeit (1838), Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (3 vols., 1841–1843), and the Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte (1847). The value of these works is impaired somewhat by Baur's habit of making the history of dogma conform to the formulae of Hegel's philosophy, a procedure "which only served to obscure the truth and profundity of his conception of history as a true development of the human mind" (Pfleiderer). Baur, however, soon came to attach more importance to personality, and to distinguish more carefully between religion and philosophy. The change is noticeable in his Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung (1852), Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (1853), and Die christliche Kirche von Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende das sechsten Jahrhunderts (1859), works preparatory to his Kirchengeschichte, in which the change of view is specially pronounced.[6]

Death and posthumous publication

Baur died, aged 68, in Tübingen. The Kirchengeschichte was published in five volumes during the years 1853-1863, partly by Baur himself, partly by his son, Ferdinand Baur, and his son-in-law, Eduard Zeller, from notes and lectures which the author left behind him. Pfleiderer describes this work, especially the first volume, as a classic for all time. "Taken as a whole, it is the first thorough and satisfactory attempt to explain the rise of Christianity and the Church on strictly historical lines, i.e. as a natural development of the religious spirit of our race under the combined operation of various human causes" (Development of Theology, p. 288). Baur's lectures on the history of dogma, Ausführlichere Vorlesungen uber die christliche Dogmengeschichte, were published later by his son (1865–1868).[6]

Tübingen School

The Tübingen School was at the height of its influence in the 1840s, but lost ground to later historical analysis.[3] Since Adolf von Harnack proposed very early dates for the synoptics and Acts (c. 1910), the Tübingen School has been generally abandoned.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Hilgenfeld, Adolf" and "Tübingen School." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
  2. ^ "Schwegler, Albert" and "Tübingen School." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
  3. ^ a b "Tübingen School." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
  4. ^ a b c d e Canney 1911, p. 540.
  5. ^ Canney 1911, pp. 540–541.
  6. ^ a b c Canney 1911, p. 541.
  7. ^ "Harnack, Adolf" and "Tübingen School." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005

Sources

  • Otto Pfleiderer (1890). Development of Theology
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Canney, Maurice Arthur (1911). "Baur, Ferdinand Christian". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 540–541.

Further reading

External links

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