RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baur Bauslin
historical development, into the general consciousness of humanity; and this form is the Jewish conception of the Messiah, the point of contact between the mind of Jesus and the world that was to believe in him, the basis on which alone a religious community destined to broaden into a Church could be built. We can, therefore, have no clear and definite conception of the personality of Jesus if we do not distinguish these two sides of it and consider them, so to speak, under the aspect of an antinomy, of a process which develops itself gradually.
If we try to get at the heart of Baur's whole view of the subject, stripping his presentation of its somewhat pathetic enthusiasm, it will appear not so very different from Kant's expression, that the faith of pure reason came in with Christ, indeed, but was so overlaid in the subsequent history that if the question were asked which was the best period in the entire course of church history, it might be unhesitatingly answered by the choice of the present, in which a nearer approach than ever before is made to pure religious doctrine. As long as Baur had gone no further into the really primitive essential import of Christianity than to consider the Pauline dogmatics as representing it, the development of the Church could perfectly well seem to him to have proceeded in a wholly rational manner. The dogmatic and ecclesiastical decisions of the early ages could, in their context, appear " reasonable," and Baur himself, in contrast 4. Their with a writer like Gottfried Arnold Weakness or with the unhistoric rationalism, and Decline, almost an orthodox historian, always in harmony with the course of events as it proceeded. Not only Athanasius and Augustine, but Gregory VII and Innocent III had full justice at his hands. But this involved an equally tolerant acknowledgment of the claims of the nineteenth century. If the humanitarianism of Goethe and Schiller seemed better adapted to the needs of educated men in this age than the Church in its older form, here also the living must take precedence; and suddenly the place of the old Church was taken by a broad " communion " in which all the heroes of the intellect, even the most modern, took their place as saints. But when the question came to be asked what this prevalent humanism had in common with ancient Christianity, it became apparent that the whole long process of development was really a totally unnecessary detour, whose purpose it was difficult to discover. It could scarcely be denied that a historical method which saw the essence of Christianity in ethics exclusively, which knew nothing of the need of redemption, and which was unable to give any positive account of the person of Christ, was one in which the Hegelian conception of development practically disappeared. Yet the distinguishing mark of the school of Baur had been the application of this very conception to Christian history, especially that of the primitive age — the attempt to show the course of history as rational and necessary; and thus, in the person of its head, the Tubingen School deserted the fundamental principle which in its palmy days it had sought to enforce. It
was, then, not surprising that uncertainty showed itself among the members of the school on the question of the Gospels. The less a definite tendency could be proved in the synoptics, the more they were shown to offer at least a substratum of purely historical matter, so much the more pressing became the question how the school's view of history could be reconciled with the actual course of events. When the attempt to construct the latter a priori failed, an advantage was given to the " literary-historical " method with which Hilgenfeld undertook to replace the criticism of tendency. In his Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das neue Testament (Leipsic, 1875) the Tubingen views were modified in a large number of points. Thus the results supposed to have been attained by the " objective criticism " of Baur were called in question by his own fellow workers; and when he died, it is hardly too much to say that his school, at least in the narrower sense, died with him.
(J. Haussleiter.)
Bibliography: Two of Ferdinand Christian Baur's books are accessible in English translation: Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, 2 vols., London, 1873-75; The Church History of the First Three Centuries, 2 vols., ib. 1878-79. Consult: A. B. Bruce, F. C. Baur and his Theory of the Origin of Christianity, New York, 1886; Worte der Erinnerung an Ferdinand Christian Baur, Tubingen, 1861; H. Beckh, Die Tiibinger historische Schule, kritisch beleuchtet, in ZPK, xlviii (1864), 1-57, 69-95; C. Weizsacker, Ferdinand Christian von Baur. Rede zur akademischen Feier seines 100. Geburtstages, Stuttgart, 1892; O. Pfleiderer, Zu F. C. Baur's Geddchtniss, in Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, 1892, No. 25; R. W. Mackay, The Tubingen School, and its Antecedents, London, 1863; S. Berger, F. C. Baur, Les Origines de I'ecole de Tubingue et ses principes, Strasburg, 1867; C. H. Toy, The Tubingen Historical School, in BQR, iii (1869), 210 sqq. Works on N. T. Introduction usually discuss the Tubingen School, as do those on the church history of the nineteenth century.
BAUR, GUSTAV ADOLF LUDWIG: Lutheran; b. at Hammelbach (17 m. n.e. of Heidelberg), in the Odenwald, June 14, 1816; d. at Leipsic May 22, 1889. He studied at Giessen, where he became docent in 1841, professor extraordinary, 1847, ordinary, 1849; he became pastor at Hamburg, 1861, and professor of practical theology at Leipsic, 1870. He was a member of the commission for revising Luther's translation of the Bible. Besides numerous sermons he issued Erklarung des Propheten Amos (Giessen, 1847); Grundzuge der Homiletik (1848); Geschichte der alttestamentlichen Weissagung (first part, 1861); Boetius und Dante (Leipsic, 1874); Grundzuge der Erziehungslehre (4th ed., Giessen, 1887); he wrote the greater part of the first volume of Schmid's Geschichte der Erziehung (Stuttgart, 1884), and Die christliche Erziehung in ihrem Verhdltnisse zum Judenthum und zur antiken Welt (2 vols., 1892).
Bibliography: G. A. Baur, Trauerfeier bei dem Begrabniss G. A. L. Baurs, Leipsic, 1889.
BAUSLIN, DAVID HENRY: Lutheran; b. at Winchester, Va., Jan. 21, 1854. He studied at Wittenberg College (B.A., 1876) and Theological Seminary, Springfield, O. (1878), and held pastorates at Tippecanoe City, O. (1878-81), Bucyrus, O. (1881-88), Second Lutheran Church, Springfield, O. (1888-93), and Trinity Church, Canton, O. (1893-96). In 1896 he was appointed professor
Bausman Bavarians