Church and Theology in the Modern Era - by Ferdinand Christian Baur (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Church and Theology in the Modern Era covers the period from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century and is based on lectures delivered by Baur in the 1840s and 1850s. It was published after his death as the fourth volume of his church history. The first and last volumes (Christianity and the Christian Church of the First Three Centuries and Church and Theology in the Nineteenth Century) have appeared in English translation from Wipf and Stock. This book contains a wealth of information, not only about the well-known figures of the Reformation and its aftermath, but also about other important persons who are often overlooked. It attends to both Protestant and Catholic history and shows that this is the most turbulent period in church history since the early years of Christianity. Ecclesiastical and political controversies are often intertwined, and momentous decisions are made that affect the modern world.

Review Quotes

"This fourth of F. C. Baur's classic five-volume history of Christianity up to 1850 provides non-German readers with a less familiar Lutheran perspective on the Reformation(s) and the subsequent shaping of European Christianities. Translated and annotated for the first time, its historical analyses and theological evaluations offer a fresh and optimistic vision of Protestantism as a new birth of freedom in the evolution of Western culture. As the architect and greatest practitioner of historical theology, Baur is always suggestive and often provocative, but this account of a most formative period of Christian history is more accessible to the general reader than any other of his twenty thousand pages. It deserves to be widely read."
--Robert Morgan, fellow, Linacre College, University of Oxford

"F. C. Baur's posthumously published Church History in the Modern Period is testimony to the encyclopedic range of his scholarship. Peter Hodgson and Robert Brown are to be thanked for making this erudite work more accessible in an impeccable English translation."
--Johannes Zachhuber, professor of historical and systematic theology, University of Oxford

About the Author

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) was professor of theology at the University of Tübingen from 1826 until his death. He was a prolific author and original thinker whose works have an impact still today.

Robert F. Brown is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Delaware. He has specialized in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion, with a focus on German idealism.

Peter C. Hodgson is Charles G. Finney Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. He has specialized in works by Baur and Hegel, as well as in contemporary issues of constructive theology.