Auberlen Karl August

Auberlen Karl August, an eminent German theologian, was born November 19, 1824, at Fellbach, near Stuttgart. He studied four years, from 1837, at Blaubeuern, and in 1841 entered the University of Tubingen as theological student. F. C. Baur (q.v.) was then at the height of his glory, and Auberlen for a time was carried away by this brilliant Rationalist: a discipline which probably helped to fit him for his later work in resisting the destructive school of theologians. The lectures of Schmid and Beck (who came to Tubingen in 1843) helped to save him from the abyss of Pantheism. He had hardly taken his doctor's degree when he published Die Theosophie Oetinger's, ein Beitrag z. Dogmengeschichte, etc. (Tibinaen, 1847, 8vo), showing the higher sphere into which his studies bad ascended. SEE OETINGER. He had previously (1845) become a pastor; and in 1848 he followed Hofacker (q.v.) in that office. In 1849 he became repentent at Tubingen, and in 1851professor extraordinary at Basel. In the same year he married the daughter of Wolfgang Menzel. From this time his labors as teacher, preacher, and author were most abundant and successful to the time of his death. He published in 1855 Zehn Predigten (Basel,,8vo); Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis (Basel, 1854, 2d ed. 1857; translated into both French and English), a work which contributed greatly to the revival of sound Biblical theology in Germany; Zehn Vortrage zur Verantwortung des Christlichen Glaubens (Basel, 1861, 8vo); Die Gottliche Offenbarung, ein apologet. Versuch (vol. 1:1861; vol. ii, posthumous, 1864). In part one he undertakes to show "that, even if we accept only those New Testament Scriptures which the most destructive of the Tubingen critics grant to be genuine, to wit, the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, a strictly scientific and logical method of interpretation forces us to the inevitable conclusion that the extraordinary gifts of the apostolic church, the miracles of the apostles, the resurrection of Christ, his manifestation of himself to Saul on the way to Damascus, as also his continued intercourse with him, are FACTS. In the gospels he asks but one concession, to wit, the historical genuineness of Christ's testimony respecting himself when on trial (and this is granted by Baur, Strauss, etc.), in order to put all deniers of the divinity of Christ in a very disagreeable predicament. In the same regressive way he goes back to the Old Testament, and by a sure induction mounts from the patent and undeniable fact-phenomena of the Old Dispensation to a supernatural and divine factor in the whole history. The result of this part of the discussion is this: 'Were the revelations of God, the miracles, not facts, then has the inmost consciousness of all the holy men of old — that is to say, of the noblest and mightiest spirits, the real pillars of human history — reposed upon illusion and mental derangement. The world is either a Bedlam, an insane asylum, or it is a temple, a place of divine epiphanies.' The second, or historical part, is a succinct history of the long struggle in Germany between rationalism and supranaturalism." A translation of part of vol. 1, by Professor Hackett, is given in Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1865. His career was prematurely cut short by consumption, May 2, 1864. In the last hour he said, in the fullness of Christian faith, "God be thanked, of death I have no fear; the Lord Jesus is my light and my song" (sketch of his life in preface to 2d vol. of Die Gttl. Offenbarung). — Herzog, Real- Encyklopadie, Supplem. 1:793; Bibliotheca Sacra, 1865, p. 395, 517.