KUHN, JOHANNES EVANGELIST von. — Theologian and philosopher, born at Wäschenbeuren (Württemberg) on 19 February 1806, died at Tübingen on 8 May 1887. He pursued his studies at the Universities of Munich and Tübingen and was ordained a priest in 1831. The following year he obtained the chair of New Testament exegesis at the University of Giessen; in 1837 he went to teach the same discipline at Tübingen, where in 1839 Drey (v.) as professor of dogmatic theology. He took an active part in political life: in 1848 he was a deputy for Ellwangen, in 1868 a permanent member of the House of Lords; in 1882 he retired from public life.
His extraordinary output reflects his dual activity as exegete and dogmatic theologian: his numerous biblical studies were published in the Jahrbücher für Theologie und christl.
Philosophie (7 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1834–37), which he founded together with his colleagues from Giessen. At Tübingen he supported the Theologische Quartalschrift for 50 years, publishing substantial theological essays there. His principal works are: Jacobi und die Philosophie seiner Zeit (Tübingen 1834); Das Leben Jesu (Mainz 1838), incomplete, against Strauss; Über Prinzip und Methode der speculativen Theologie (Tübingen 1840); Katholische Dogmatik: I. 1. Einleitung in die katholische Dogmatik (ibid. 1846; 2nd revised ed., ibid. 1859); 2. Die dogmatische Lehre von der Erkenntnis der Eigenschaften und der Einheit Gottes (ibid. 1849; 2nd ed., ibid. 1862); II. Die christliche Lehre von der göttlichen Dreieinigkeit (ibid. 1875); III. Die christliche Lehre von der göttlichen Gnade (ibid. 1868): this is his masterpiece, left incomplete.
A profound connoisseur of Greek patristics and Augustinian theology, he developed a dogmatic system of a Platonist-voluntarist character, in harmony with the philosophical tendencies of Germany (in Munich he attended Schelling’s lectures and embraced the fundamental premises of Jacobi’s fideism), and was thereby spontaneously led to oppose the resurgent scholasticism. Indeed, he was the acknowledged leader of this tendency and for decades fought vigorously against the finest representatives of neo-Thomism: with Clemens, over the relations between science and faith; with Schäfer, over the relations between nature and Grace. At the time of the First Vatican Council he sided with the minority; but, once the definition had been promulgated and the German episcopate had submitted, he declared every further opposition illegitimate and laid down his pen.