ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED. - Protestant theologian, born at Annaberg (Saxony) on 5 Sept. 1666, died at Perleberg on 30 May 1714. He pursued his university studies at Wittenberg, was a friend of Spener and followed his Pietism. He worked as a tutor in Dresden but had to leave the position because his rigorism made him unbearable. He then became professor of history at Giessen and obtained the title of historiographer to the King of Prussia. In 1700, having resigned this office out of scruples of conscience as it distracted him too much, he was appointed preacher to the Duchess of Saxony-Eisenach at Alstädt; in 1705 he became pastor at Werben and in 1707 at Perleberg.
He was a great scholar of the early Church, which he described as an ideal never surpassed and whose history he traced in the book Unpartheysche Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, published in Frankfurt in part in 1699 and in part in 1700 under the title: Fortsetzung und Erläuterung der Unpartheyschen Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie. In this work the author makes an apology for almost all heresies, attributing the calamities of the Church to ecclesiastics without sparing his fellow believers. In this way he provoked numerous controversies, to which the complete edition of the work published in Schaffhausen in 1740-42 bears witness. Also worthy of note are the following works: Historia et descriptio theologiae mysticae seu theosophiae arcanae et reconditae (Frankfurt 1702), placed on the Index by decree of 20 Sept. 1760; Die Historie von der Lehre, Leben und Thaten der beyden Apostel und Führer Christi, Petri und Pauli (Rostock 1708). He also wrote a book of devotion: Wahre Abbildung des inwendigen Christentums (Leipzig 1709).
Of good and pious disposition, the author deeply felt the Catholic mystics but could not free himself from the prevailing prejudices against the Church and the papacy; he always saw an opposition between personal piety and ecclesiastical authority and discerned in all heterodox thinkers traces of the true Gospel, regarding them as precursors of the Reformation.