Maurice Arthur Canney

“ He studied philosophy, philology and theology at Marburg in 1786, and eventually (1795) became professor ordinarius of theology at Heidelberg, where he died on the 22nd of November 1836. Daub was one of the leaders of a school which sought to reconcile theology and philosophy, and to bring about a speculative reconstruction of orthodox dogma. In the course of his intellectual development, he came successively under the influence of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and on account of the different phases through which he passed he was called the Talleyrand of German thought. ”

“ He contends that the task of his age was to struggle against the Catholic principle which had infected Protestant theology and the church. In his Christliche Dogmatik (2 vols., 1858-1859) he argues that the record of revelation is human and was historically conditioned: it can never be absolutely perfect; and that inspiration, though originating directly with God, is continued through human instrumentality. ”

“ Baur contends that St Paul was opposed in Corinth by a Jewish-Christian party which wished to set up its own form of Christian religion instead of his universal Christianity. He finds traces of a keen conflict of parties in the post-apostolic age. ”

“ His purpose was, as Otto Pfleiderer says, “to connect the metaphysical ideas, which had been arrived at by means of philosophical dialectic, directly with the persons and events of the Gospel narratives, thus raising these above the region of ordinary experience into that of the supernatural, and regarding the most absurd assertions as philosophically justified. ”

“ The learning of the work was fully recognized, and in 1826 the author was called to Tübingen as professor of theology. It is with Tübingen that his greatest literary achievements are associated. His earlier publications here treated of mythology and the history of dogma. Das manichäische Religionssystem appeared in 1831, Apollonius von Tyana in 1832, Die christliche Gnosis in 1835, and Über das Christliche im Platonismus oder Socrates und Christus in 1837. ”