Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/557

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BAUMGARTEN, M.—BAUR
  

to notice that Baumgarten’s first work preceded those of Burke, Diderot, and P. André, and that Kant had a great admiration for him. The principal works of Baumgarten are the following: Dispulationes de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (1735); Aesthetics; Metaphysica (1739; 7th ed. 1779); Ethica philosophica (1751, 2nd ed. 1763); Initia philosophiae practicae primae (1760). After his death, his pupils published a Philosophia Generalis (1770) and a Jus Naturae (1765), which he had left in manuscript.

See Meyer, Baumgarten’s Leben (1763); Abbt, Baumgarten’s Leben und Charakter (1765); H. G. Meyer, Leibnitz und Baumgarten (1874); J. Schmidt, Leibnitz und Baumgarten (Halle, 1875); and article Aesthetics.

His brother, Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706–1757), was professor of theology at Halle, and applied the methods of Wolff to theology. His chief pupil, Johann Salomo Semler (q.v.), is sometimes called, the father of German rationalism. Baumgarten, though he did not renounce the Pietistic doctrine, began the process which Semler completed. His works include Evangelische Glaubenslehre (1759); Auszug der Kirchengeschichte (1743–1762); Primae lineae breviarii antiquitatum Christianarum (1747); Geschichte der Religionsparteien (1760); Nachricht von merkwürdigen Büchern (1752–1757); Nachrichten von einer hallischen Bibliothek (1748–1751).

See life by Semler (Halle, 1758).


BAUMGARTEN, MICHAEL (1812–1889), German Protestant theologian, was born at Haseldorf in Schleswig-Holstein on the 25th of March 1812. He studied at Kiel University (1832), and became professor ordinarius of theology at Rostock (1850). A liberal scholar, he became widely known in 1854 through a work, Die Nachtgesichte Sacharjas. Eine Prophetenstimme aus der Gegenwart, in which, starting from texts in the Old Testament and assuming the tone of a prophet, he discussed topics of every kind. At a pastoral conference in 1856 he boldly defended evangelical freedom as regards the legal sanctity of Sunday. This, with other attempts to liberalize religion, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities of Mecklenburg, and in 1858 he was deprived of his professorship. He then travelled throughout Germany, demanding justice, telling the story of his life (Christliche Selbstgespräche, 1861), and lecturing on the life of Jesus (Die Geschichte Jesu. Für das Verständniss der Gegenwart, 1859). In 1865 he helped to found the Deutsche Protestantenverein, but withdrew from it in 1877. On several occasions (1874, 1877 and 1878) he sat in the Reichstag as a member of the progressive party. He died on the 21st of July 1889. Other works: Apostelgeschichte oder Entwicklungsgang der Kirche von Jerusalem bis Rom (2 vols. 2nd ed., 1859), and Doktor Martin Luther, ein Volksbuch (1883).

H. H. Studt published his autobiography in 1891 (2 vols.); see also C. Schwartz, Neueste Theologie (1869); Lichtenberger, Hist. Germ. Theol., 1889; Calwer-Zeller, Kirchen-Lexikon.


BAUMGARTEN-CRUSIUS, LUDWIG FRIEDRICH OTTO (1788–1842), German Protestant divine, was born at Merseburg. In 1805 he entered the university of Leipzig and studied theology and philology. After acting as Privatdocent at Leipzig, he was, in 1812, appointed professor extraordinarius of theology at Jena, where he remained to the end of his life, rising gradually to the head of the theological faculty. He died on the 31st of May 1842. With the exception of Church history, he lectured on all branches of so-called theoretical theology, especially on New Testament exegesis, biblical theology, dogmatic ethics, and the history of dogma, and his comprehensive knowledge, accurate scholarship and wide sympathies gave peculiar value to his lectures and treatises, especially those on the development of church doctrine. His published works are many, the most important being:—Lehrbuch der christtichen Sittenlehre (1826); Grundzüge der biblischen Theologie (1828); Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1832); Compendium der Dogmengeschichte (1840). The last, perhaps his best work, was left unfinished, but was completed from his notes in 1846 by Karl Hase.


BAUR, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN (1792–1860), leader of the Tübingen school of theology, was born at Schmiden, near Canstatt, on the 21st of June 1792. After receiving an early training in the theological seminary at Blaubeuren, he went in 1809 to the university of Tübingen. Here he studied for a time under Ernst Bengel, grandson of the eminent New Testament critic, Johann Albrecht Bengel, and at this early stage in his career he seems to have been under the influence of the old Tübingen school. But at the same time the philosophers Immanuel Fichte and 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 was now able to set to work upon those 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. When, a few years after his appointment at Blaubeuren, he published his first important, work, Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des Altertums (1824–1825), it became evident that he had made a deeper study of philosophy, and had come under the influence of Schelling and more particularly of Friedrich Schleiermacher. The learning of the work was fully recognized, and in 1826 the author was called to Tübingen as professor of theology. It is with Tübingen that his greatest literary achievements are associated. His earlier publications here treated of mythology and the history of dogma. Das manichäische Religionssystem appeared in 1831, Apollonius von Tyana in 1832, Die christliche Gnosis in 1835, and Über das Christliche im Platonismus oder Socrates und Christus in 1837. As Otto Pfleiderer (Development of Theology, 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.” Meantime Baur had exchanged one master in philosophy for another, Schleiermacher for Hegel. In doing so, he had adopted completely the Hegelian philosophy of history. “Without philosophy,” he has said, “history is always for me dead and dumb.” The change of view is illustrated clearly in the essay, published in the Tübinger Zeitschrift for 1831, on the Christ-party in the Corinthian Church, Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz des paulinischen und petrinischen in der ältesten Kirche, der Apostel Petrus in Rom, the trend of which is suggested by the title. Baur contends that St Paul was opposed in Corinth by a Jewish-Christian party which wished to set up its own form of Christian religion instead of his universal Christianity. He finds traces of a keen conflict of parties in the post-apostolic age. The theory is further developed in a later work (1835, the year in which David Strauss’ Leben Jesu was published), Über die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe. In this Baur attempts to prove that the false teachers mentioned in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus are the Gnostics, particularly the Marcionites, of the second century, and consequently that the Epistles were produced in the middle of this century in opposition to Gnosticism. He next proceeded to investigate the Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles in the same manner, publishing his results in 1845 under the title Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre. In this he contends that only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians and Romans are genuinely Pauline, and that the Paul of Acts is a different person from the Paul of these genuine Epistles, the author being a Paulinist who, with an eye to the different parties in the Church, is at pains to represent Peter as far as possible as a Paulinist and Paul as far as possible as a Petrinist. Thus it becomes clear that Baur is prepared to apply his theory to the whole of the New Testament; in the words of H. S. Nash, “he carried a sweeping hypothesis into the examination of the New Testament.” Those writings alone he considers genuine in which the conflict between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians is clearly marked. In his Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen Evangelien, ihr Verhältniss zu einander, ihren Charakter und Ursprung (1847) he turns his attention to the Gospels, and here again finds that the authors were conscious of the conflict of parties; the Gospels reveal a mediating or conciliatory tendency (Tendenz) on the part of the writers or redactors. The Gospels, in fact, are adaptations