BAUR, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN. — Protestant theologian, born at Schmieden on 22 June 1792, died at Tübingen on 2 December 1860. He studied at the University of Tübingen, intending to follow his father’s career as a Lutheran pastor. But after a few months he abandoned the ministry in order to devote himself to teaching and, above all, to the study of the origins of Christianity. In 1826, at the age of 32, he obtained the chair of Church History and the History of Dogma at the aforementioned University, which he held until his death.
His principal works are: Die sogenannten Pastoral-Briefe (Tübingen 1835); Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi (Stuttgart 1845, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1867); Kritische Untersuchungen über die canonischen Evangelien (Tübingen 1847); Das Markuservangelium nach seinem Ursprung und Character (ibid. 1851); Das Christentum und die christliche Kirche in den drei ersten Jahrhunderten (vol. I of his Kirchengeschichte, ibid. 1853, 2nd ed., ibid. 1860); Vorlesungen über die neutestamentl. Theologie (ibid. 1867, posthumous), and a large number of dissertations published in three theological collections.
As a fervent adherent of Hegelian philosophy, B. applied to the New Testament the theory of the continual becoming and evolution of the universal Idea through the indefinite series of theses and antitheses issuing in synthesis or fusion. Christianity, consequently, represents a transitional phase in humanity’s religious development. Christ inaugurated this phase by grasping the religious idea elaborated over the preceding centuries and making it capable of conquering the world by casting it in the mold of Jewish messianism. The further effort made by the religious idea to free itself from the particular form impressed upon it by its founder sums up the entire history of the Christian religion.
That effort corresponds to a continual struggle between the universalistic and the particularistic, or Jewish, element; the former is represented by Paul (Paulinism), and the latter by Peter (Petrinism). The struggle
had its conclusion, that is, its synthesis, only around the middle of the 2nd century, through repeated and gradual attempts at accommodation that were to lead to the establishment of the Catholic Church (the Jewish element) (the Pauline element). Ultimately, it was Paulinism that prevailed.
The rapprochement would have been facilitated by the growing need for all to unite in the face of the eruption of the Gnostic heresy and the outbreak of the Roman persecutions, and it was promoted by writings in which both parties sought to bury the past, to attenuate their differences, and to invite one another to reciprocal concessions. B. therefore distinguishes three groups of writings: those of the Jewish faction (thesis), those of the Pauline faction formed by the Gentile Christians (antithesis), and those of the conciliatory tendency (synthesis).
On the basis of this criterion, B. claims to explain the formation of the canon of the New Testament books: a) in the 1st century he places the four great Epistles: to the Romans, I and II to the Corinthians, and to the Galatians, recognized as Pauline and regarded as anti-Petrine circular letters; he attributes the Apocalypse, instead, to the opposing tendency and associates with it certain contemporary apocryphal writings (Gospel of the Hebrews, of the Ebionites, of Peter, etc.); b) he considers the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians to be of uncertain date: in them the anti-Petrine tendency is already too greatly attenuated for them to be confidently ascribed to St. Paul; similarly, the Epistles of Peter and James are considered too little anti-Pauline to be attributed to one of the Twelve; c) B. places the Pastoral letters in the 2nd century, written to combat the heretic Marcion (and his followers), in which Pauline teaching appears faded; and the Acts of the Apostles, which would be the principal work of the conciliatory tendency, since through sayings and deeds (distorted or invented) it aims to present Peter within a framework that is also universalistic, and Paul within one that is also Jewish; d) the Gospels, at least in their present form, would likewise date from the 2nd century. That of Matthew, of pacifying tendency, would have arisen from a reworking of the apocryphal Gospel «of the Hebrews»; that of Luke would be Marcion’s Pauline Gospel, modified in accordance with the same tendency; Mark is neutral and without value from the historical point of view; John presupposes that the reconciliation had already been in effect for some time.
This criticism, called «tendency» criticism, placed B. at the head of German New Testament scholarship and made him leader of the noted «new Tübingen school» («new» to distinguish it from the orthodox apologetic school of the 18th century), whose cohesion lasted only briefly, because its best disciples (such as E. Zeller, A. Schwegler, A. Hingelfeld, K. Holsten, K. Holl; etc.) soon came into conflict with one another.
Following a less subjective criterion than that of their teacher, some of them challenged B.’s conclusions, indeed calling into question his fundamental a priori scheme itself; while Catholics attacked the system frontally, relying, among other things, on the same letter to the Galatians, which B. used to document the existence of a sectarian dualism within primitive Christianity. When he died, his school could be said to be in decline, although its animating spirit has persisted—indeed, has become increasingly pronounced—and the thesis of «tendencies» continues to have many followers among New Testament «critics». A. Loisy and M. Goguel, for example, have made use of the Baurian ecclesiological conception.