DREY, JOHANN SEBASTIAN. - Theologian and apologist, b. at Killingen on 16 Oct. 1777, d. at Tübingen on 16 Feb. 1853. Ordained priest in 1801, he was assigned to parochial ministry and at the same time devoted himself to the study of the philosophy then in vogue. In 1806 he began teaching at the gymnasium in Rottweil, from which he moved in 1812 to the University of Ellwangen and then to that of Tübingen, where two years later he founded, together with three colleagues, the Theologische Quartalschrift, which rendered immense services to Catholic scholarship. He alternated the chair of dogmatics with that of apologetics, leaving a copious scientific output in which the philosophical-historical contribution to the subjects dealing with Revelation is noteworthy. Nineteenth-century theology, especially the German, is indebted to D. for the positive approach in the study of dogma.
Among his works worthy of mention are: Observata quaedam ad illustrandam fustini martyris de regno millenario sententiam (Gmund 1814); Dissertatio historico-theologica originem et vicissitudinem exomologees in Ecclesia catholica ex documentis ecclesiasticis illustrans (Ellwangen 1815); Einleitung im Stuium der Theologie (Tübingen 1819); Neue Untersuchungen über die Constitution und Kanones der Apostel (ibid. 1832); Die Apologetik als wissenschaftliche Nachweisung der Göttlichkeit des Christentums (3 vols., Mainz 1838-47).