not merely in the formation of the Petrine tradition but as having exercised au important influence upon the com
position of the Acts of the Apostles."This supposed conflict betwixt Petrinism and Paulinism, or, in other words, betwixt Jewish and Gentile Christianity, lies at the foundation of all Baur s critical labours. His speciality as a New Testament scholar and critic was the firmness with "which he laid hold of what he believed to be the only genuine foundation of historical Christianity in St Paul, and his four great epistles to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, and to the Romans. These epistles were to him alone unchallengeable as the authentic writings of the great apostle of the Gentiles, and the antagonism of which lie made so much appeared to him everywhere to pervade them. The epistles to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to the Philippians, and the short letter to Philemon, were at the best doubtfully genuine. They seemed to him to bear traces of a later Gnosticism in many of their expressions, while he altogether rejected the apostolical character of the Pastoral Epistles. These letters, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, were to him writings not of the 1st but of the 2d century, proceeding not from the Pauline School, but from the Catholic and Concilia tory School, which towards the middle and end of the 2d century sought to adjust and harmonize the earlier conflicting elements of Pet.riniem and Paulinism. This impress of conciliation and compromise appeared to him to be specially stamped upon the Acts of the Apostles, and to ba the true explanation of the relations there depicted betwixt St Peter and St Paul.
Such were the views advocated by Baur in a succession of writings on the Pastoral Epistles (1835) and the Epistle to the Romans (1836); but especially in his great work on the Apostle Paul (1845), which may be said to sum up the result of his critical labours on the Pauline writings.
Then in a further series of critical investigations he turned his attention to the Gospels. He dealt with them as a whole, " their relation to one another, their origin, and character," in a treatise which appeared in 1847, and in 1851 he devoted a special volume to the gospel of St Mark. The result of his investigations in this direction was to satisfy him that all the Gospels owe their origin more or less to the same tendencies or traces of party design, which he everywhere discovers in the first Christian age. Our present Gospels are not, in his view, the most ancient documents of the kind possessed by the church. Before them there was a primary cycle of evangelical tradition, known by various names as the gospel of the Hebrews, of St Peter, of the Ebionites, of the Egyptians, &c. In the existing canon the Gospel of St Matthew resembles those earlier narratives most closely. It reproduces most com pletely the character of the primitive Jewish Christianity, yet not without important later modifications. The Gospel of St Luke is, of course, of Pauline origin, yet also retouched with a view to the conciliatory tendencies of the Church of the 2d century and the influence of the Petrine tradition. That of St Mark is of later date than either, and bears the most evident traces of adaptation. Of all the gospels it is the most suspected by the Tubingen School. The Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, is a definite work, but of the 2d, not of the 1st century. An examination of its contents, its mode of composition, and its general plan clearly reveals its dogmatic and idealistic character. The historical data are merely a background to the speculative ideas which it unfolds. The prologue by itself is sufficient proof of its logical method and purpose, while the contrasts which everywhere pervade it betwixt light and darkness, life and death, the Spirit and the flesh, Christ and the children of the devil, and the dramatic force and propriety with which these contrasts are handled throughout, point to the same conclusion. Further, the differences betwixt the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel are held to show con clusively that they could not have proceeded from the same author.
In addition to these critical labours Baur distinguished himself by a series of elaborate historical monographs on special doctrines of Christianity, for example his History of the Doctrine of the Atonement in 1838, and his History of the Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation, in 3 volumes, in 1841-3. His unceasing activity further produced a Handbook of the History of Dogma in 1847, an interesting tract on the Chief Epochs of Ecclesiastical History (1652), an admirable digest of his general views on the origin and growth of the early church under the title of The Christian Church of the First Three Centuries (1853). A further volume of general Church History from the 4th to the 6th century, appeared from his pen just before his death (1859), and subsequently three volumes containing the History of the Church of the Middle Ages (1861), the History of the Church of more recent times (1863), and the Christian History of the 19th century (1863). Finally, in 1865, appeared Lectures on the History of Christian Dogma.
His death took place on the 2d December I860. He lies buried in the cemetery at Tubingen, not far from the poet Uhland, with the simple inscription on his tomb, " F. C. Baur. Theolog."
show Baur s indefatigable industry and enthusiasm a^ a theologian ; and when it is remembered that all his works are of a strictly scientific character indicating everywhere . original research, and a penetrating and systematic intel ligence which never slumbers, however it may be mistaken, it is evident that there are few names in the recent history of theology that claim more significance than that of Ferdinand Christian Baur. Of the value of his labours and the extent to which his theological views may be said to have verified themselves in the modern mind which has continued profoundly agitated by the problems which he started, this is not the place to speak. It need only be said that, while many of his opinions arc strongly contested, and some of the most enlightened recent investi gations prove that he has greatly exaggerated the anta gonisms of the early church, and post-dated most of the writings of the New Testament, it is at the same time admitted by all advanced scholars that he has, even, in his exaggerations, contributed to a clearer view of the great principles at work in the 1st and 2d centuries and the lines of spiritual movement along which the Christian church moved to its historical formation and development. No student since Baur can fail to recognize the distinctive influences of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, and the extent to which this distinction, and in some cases anta gonism, are impressed upon the New Testament writings. To him also and his school must be attributed the modern idea that the surest historical foot-hold of Christianity is in the four great Pauline epistles. These, more than any other New Testament writings, lie in the clear dawn of the sun-rise which enlightened the world. The Gospels remain, not indeed in a mist of unauthentic story, but in comparative shadow. They come only gradually into the light after a long dim undergrowth in the rich soil of Primitive Christianity. There is much to be said against Baur s views of their later origin in the 2d century. The more this century is studied the less does it seem capable of originating such marvellously fresh products of spiritual intelligence. But it is not the less certain that the Synoptic Gospels took their present form only by degrees, and that while they have their root in the Apostolic Age and the Apostolic mind, they are also fashioned by later
influences, and adapted to special wants in the Early