The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

stricter Lutherans. In the course of controversy the more general questions
connected with the person of Christ were discussed. All these questions
were settled in the "Form of Concord," (1577.) So deeply was the church
grounded in fundamental unity of faith, that none of these controversies,
violent as some of them were, were able to rend it into denominational
fragments. The subsequent controversies have been on syncretism (1655),
pietism (1686), and rationalism (1751), and those connected with the
Union and the revival of Lutheranism (from 1817, Harms's Theses, to the
present hour).
Theological Science in the Lutheran Church.
Theological science flourished in the sixteenth century most of all in
the universities of Wittenberg, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Marburg, and Jena.
To this era belong Luther, Melanchthon, Flacius, Chemnitz, Brentius, and
Chytraeus. In the seventeenth century occur the names of Glassius, Pfeiffer,
Erasmus Schmidt, Hakspan, Gier, Seb. Schmidt, Calovius; in dogmatics,
Hutter, Gerhard, Quenstedt, Calixtus, Hunnius; in church history,
Rechenberg, Ittig, Sagittarius, Seckendorf, and Arnold. In the eighteenth
century, Löscher closes the ancient school; and the Pietistic school,
practical rather than scientific, is illustrated by Lange. The Conservative
Pietistic, avoiding the faults of the others and combining their virtues,
embraces Hollazius, Starck, Buddeus, Cyprian, J. C. Wolf, Weismann,
Deyling, Carpzov, J. II. and C. B. Michaelis, J. G. Walch, Pfaff, Mosheim,
Bengel, and Crusius. The school which treated theology after the
philosophical method of Wolf numbers S. J. Baumgarten, Reinbeck, and
Carpzov; to the transitional school belong Ernesti, J. D. Michaelis, Semler,
who prepared the way for rationalism, and Zöllner; the principal members
of the rationalistic school were Greisbach, Koppe, J. G. Rosenmüller,
Eichhorn, Gabler, Bertholdt, Henke, Spittler, Eberhard, and A. H.
Niemeyer. Of the supranaturalistic school, abandoning the ancient
orthodoxy in various degrees, but still maintaining more or less of the
fundamentals of general Christianity, are Morus, Döderlein, Seiler, Storr,
Knapp, Reinhard, Lilienthal, and Köppen; and in church history,
Schröckh, C. W. F. Walch, Stäudlin, and Planck. The founder of the
distinctive theology of the nineteenth century was