F. C. Baur's Synthesis of Bohme and Hegel: Redefining Christian Theology as a Gnostic Philosophy of Religion

In this book, Professor Simu shows how Christian theology started to be understood as a Gnostic philosophy of religion in the thought of the 19th-century scholar F. C. Baur. Although Baur was seen traditionally as a theologian and biblical exegete, Simu argues that he was in fact a philosopher of religion, and it was his philosophical reading of Christian theology that informed his biblical preoccupations. Specifically, Baur s perspective on Christian theology was heavily influenced by Jakob Bohme s esoteric theosophy and Hegel s religious philosophy in some key issues such as creation, Lucifer, dualism and the connection between spirit and matter coupled with that between philosophy and religion."