BAIER, JOHANN WILHELM. - Professor of theology in the Lutheran faculty of Jena and of Halle, B. was born in 1647 and died in 1695, and stands astride that age of transition between Lutheran theological traditionalism and the warmer Pietist innovation inaugurated by Spener.

Culturally armored and almost encyclopedic, B., between 1673 and 1694, brought to light a work summarizing every aspect of theology: Compendium theologiae postitiae, homileticae, historicae, moralis et exegeticae. In his conclusions he was not exempt from personalistic sophistries and hair-splittings, for example holding ritual exorcism to be "indifferent" in Baptism, or else discriminating, within the New Testament canon, between books of "first and second rank." More sympathetic, therefore, does he appear to us in his irenic and ecumenical aspect, both in relations between Protestants and Protestants and in those between Protestants and Catholics. In this direction B. composed two reconciling works: Collatio doctrinae Quakerorum et Protestantium (1694), and Collatio doctrinae pontificiorum et Protestantium (1692).

Bibliography

BIBL.: J. Kunze, in Realencycl. für Prot. u. Kirche, II (1897), pp. 359-62.

Pietro Chiminelli

@incollection{ec2_baier_johann_wilhelm, author = {Chiminelli, Piero}, title = {Baier, johann wilhelm}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {699}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/baier-johann-wilhelm} }

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Baier, Johann Wilhelm

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