Ferdinand Christian Baur Contribution to the New Testament - Essay Example

Ferdinand Christian Baur Contribution to the New Testament Yourlast Religion and Theology 11/03 Ferdinand Christian Baur was born on 21 June 1792. He was a protestant theologian and founder and leader of the (new) Tubingen School of theology. Baur presented that second century Christianity depicted that fusion of two combatant theses: Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity. Baur’s opinion or was extensive and profound, but one thing cannot be denied that his view gave a new angle and face to the New testaments and is now studied in different colors. Not many years later he published his first work Symbolik und Mythologie oder die Naturreligion des Altertums ("Symbol and mythology: the natural religion of Antiquity", 1824–1825), which showed his interest and deep study of philosophy. The ancient history of Christian biblical interpretation has been molded by great and famous philosophers and scholars who travels deep into the sea of Christian text and interpret it according to their believe and philosophy1. The contents of the New Testament have been contributed by scholars such as Baur, however, criticism of this same testament can also be found too by the same scholar. In F. C Baur mixture of history and theology, the historical exploration of Christian antiquity has helped in forging a path to comprehend the Christianity faith2. This helps crossing the hurdle the Enlightenment’s separation of the rational truth from (if and then) history. Baur contributed to the New Testaments by studying the theology and unfolding the Christianity beliefs and faith rather than just studying its origin. He further believed that truth can be beheld only in a particular history and that is id illustrated only in historical development. His objective was to speak of God in terms of self-divine revelation. Tubingen school attempted to merge the church’s teaching with philosophy and biblical texts. One of the most successful people to carry out this interpretation was Ferdinand Christian Baur, but opened up new areas in the New Testament for controversies. His one of the major and significant contribution was attracting attention to the dive and believes in God and religion within New Testaments and established principles of raw historical comprehension of the Bible. He rejected Supernaturalism and implemented Hegelian dialectic to the Testament. Through this he found out basic tension between the Pauline and Petrine theology, hence, the documents and words of the New Testaments tried to smoothen the fight between the Jewish and Gentile church. He believed that the authenticity of other books can be judged by the intention of the content, id it reveling the ‘tendencies’ of the conflict or not. His theoretical reconstruction was not only philosophical but understood the nature of the conflict mistakenly that was reflected in the early Christianity and this became the ruling factor in criticism of both Gospel and New Testament letters3. Some nineteenth century scholars rejected the Pauline’s letter citing that they had different vocabulary and F. C Baur in particular refused the Pauline attribution in the letter as they could not have been authorized by Paul. Baur’s ‘tendency’ criticism and reconstruction was accepted in the abundance and this tradition of predominance is well known have powerful influence in America and England too by the mid-century4. Nonetheless, Baur’s contribution and efforts were not accepted or taken into account without any critics. The queries were that was his reconstruction historically based and if so was the case then, should the pseudepigraphal files be retained with the New Testament circle? The answer to these questions by Baur was, that Pauline letter one should not think of false and deception, and however, if the matter is not smart enough on this hypothesis, then it cannot be maintained as an argument. Baur’s most crucial work was undertaken in 1830s and 1840s, with lectures on New Testament theology and got published in 1964, four years after his death by his son5. However, his initial publication was a long interpretation and evaluation of first two volumes of Gottlob Philipp Christian’s Die biblische Theologie. His works showed that Biblical theology should focus more on the nurturing of biblical concepts of the religion in sequence succession and on the concise differences of the individual authors. For him, New Testament theology is the one that has to illustrate both the teachings of Jesus and doctrinal concepts as well that are based upon them. One of the salient points in biblical theology is that it should be historical rather than normative in character. In connection to his previous studies he portrays three periods: The first one is described through the ‘concept-of-doctrine’, the second period include Hebrews, the lesser Pauline letters, Peter, James, Synoptic and Acts and the third period composes of Pastoral epistles and Johannine letters6. For Baur one of the works for the New Testament theology was not to study the doctrine and put the concepts side by side, but advancement of growth should also be shown. His creativity and novel thought can be seen precisely in promising the need, which he sometimes calls as ‘the view of the totality of early Christian history’. To conclude the above context, it can be said that Baur’s view of the New Testaments has given a end and high position to the angle through which it was previously perceived. Through his work he can be conceive as problematical rather than a perfecter. His one of the far sighted challenge was to read the scriptures as a whole, as in one historical platform in the service of pan- biblical theology and create piercing questions about the nature of the canon of the New Testament, in particular. Furthermore, he replaces a significant construct of early Christian’s history for the canonical context, which for most of the time was a broader set to interpret individual’s document and statements. Bibliography Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament.Vol. 1. Baylor University Press, 1951. Ellis, Edward. History and Interpretation in New Testament Perspective.2001. McKim, Donald K., ed. Dictionary of major biblical interpreters. InterVarsity Press, 2007. Hasel, Gerhard F. New Testament theology: Basic issues in the current debate. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1978 Read More