Julius Müller

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Julius Müller (April 10, 1801 – September 27, 1878), was a German Protestant theologian.

He was born at Brieg, and studied at Breslau, Göttingen and Berlin, first law, then theology. In 1839 he became professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Halle (1839). In 1848 he helped to found the Deutsch-evang. Kirchentag, and two years later founded and edited (1850-1861), with August Neander and Karl Nitzsch, the Deutsche Zeitschrift für christliche Wissenschaft und christliches Leben. He died at Halle.

A disciple of Neander and friend of Richard Rothe, Müller bitterly opposed the philosophy of Georg Hegel and the criticism of FC Baur. His book, Über den Gegensatz des Protestantismus und das Catholicismus (1833), called forth a reply from Baur, and he was one of those who attacked David Strauss's Life of Jesus. In 1846 he had been deputed to attend the General Evangelical Synod at Berlin. Here he supported the Consensus-Union and afterwards defended himself in the pamphlets Die erste Generalsynode der evang. Landeskirche Preussens (1847) and Die evangelische Union, ihr Wesen und göttliches Recht (1854). His chief work, however, was Die christliche Lehre der Sünde (2 vols., 1839; 5th ed., 1867; Eng. trans. from 5th ed.), in which he carried scholasticism so far as "to revive the ancient Gnostic theory of the fate of man before all time, a theory which found no favour amongst his theological friends" (Otto Pfleiderer).

Muller's other works include Dogmat. Abhandlungen (1870), and Das christliche Leben (3rd ed., 1847). See M. Kähler, Julius Müller (1878); L. Schultze, Julius Müller (1879) and Julius Müller als Ethiker (1895).

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