ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED. – Protestant theologian, b. at Annaberg (Saxony) on 5 September 1666, d. at Perleberg on 30 May 1714. He pursued his university studies
at Wittenberg, where he became a friend of Spener and followed his Pietism. A tutor in Dresden, he had to leave the position because he had made himself unbearable through his rigorism. He then became professor of history at Giessen and obtained the title of historiographer to the King of Prussia. In 1700, having, out of a scruple of conscience, resigned that office, which distracted him too much, he was appointed preacher to the Duchess of Saxe-Eisenach at Alstädt; in 1705 he became pastor at Werben and in 1707 at Perleberg.
He was a great scholar of the primitive Church, which he described as an ideal never surpassed and whose history he traced in the book Unpartheische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, published in Frankfurt in part in 1699 and in part in 1700, under the title: Fortsetzung und Erläuterung der Unpartheischen Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie. In it, A. offers an apologia for almost all heresies, attributing the Church’s misfortunes to the clergy, without sparing his fellow believers. In this way he provoked numerous controversies, echoed in the complete edition of the work, published in Schaffhausen in 1740–42. The following works also deserve mention: Historia et descriptio theologiae mysticae seu theosophiae arcanae et reconditae (Frankfurt 1702), placed on the Index by decree of 20 September 1706; Die Historie von der Lehre, Leben und Thaten der beyden Apostel und Jünger Christi, Petri und Pauli (Rostock 1708). He also wrote a book of piety: Wahre Abbildung des inwendigen Christentums (Leipzig 1709).
A man of good and pious character, A. was deeply moved by the Catholic mystics, but was unable to free himself from the prevailing prejudices against the Church and the papacy; he always saw an opposition between personal piety and ecclesiastical authority, and in all the heterodox he discerned traces of the true Gospel, regarding them as precursors of the Reformation.