I Ntroduction
INTRODUCTION
It was a time of great deeds and deep faith. In the New World, small outposts were being formed. Captain John Smith would establish Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. In the Old World, discoveries were being made in science, art, and architecture. Eloquence and culture were prized and people attained heights of learning that have perhaps not been attained since then. It was the era of William Shakespeare (1564-1614), Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), and Rembrandt (1606-1669). The Church of the West had been divided into three main confessions—Evangelical Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic—and each of these confessions was busy organizing its congregations and working out its theology in detail. At the same time, it was an age when political tensions and religious animosities within the Holy Roman Empire would lead to three decades of bloodshed in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648).
This period in the history of Lutheran Germany is known as the Age of Orthodoxy. Its archtheologian was Johann Gerhard. Gerhard was born on October 17, 1582, the son of Bartholomew Gerhard, a city counselor and treasurer for the town of Quedlinburg, and Margaret Berndes. Although his father died less than sixteen years later (d. 1598), Johann Gerhard’s mother lived for many years thereafter (d. 1624).!1 In 1599, Gerhard enrolled at the University of Wittenberg and studied the curriculum of philosophy, which included courses in history, logic, ethics, mathematics, physics, and anthropology. During this time he also read “the best commentators on Aristotle.”2 From 1600 to 1602, Gerhard studied medicine at Wittenberg. In 1603, after working as a private tutor and moving to Jena, he turned to the study of theology at the advice of Johann Arndt, since “he was anxious to become a physician of souls instead of being a physician of the body.” At Jena, Gerhard heard lectures on the books of the New and Old Testaments, devoting himself especially to the study of the Hebrew language and of the Old Testament. In addition, he read the early church fathers and the medieval scholastics diligently.3 Although he became an adjunct professor of the philosophical faculty in 1605, it was not long before Gerhard was called to the ministry. In mid-1606, Prince John Casimir called Gerhard to be superintendent of the churches of Heldburg and to be a theology teacher at the upper preparatory school of Coburg. Having been “crowned with the rite of ordination” on August 24, Gerhard was installed and invested in his new office on September 6 in the presence of the pastors of the twenty-six parishes under his supervision. The same year, Gerhard finished the work for his doctorate in theology and was awarded his degree on November 11, 1606. It was during this time, while serving as pastor, superintendent, and religion teacher, that Gerhard began to write his Theological Commonplaces. His first four Commonplaces were published in 1610, when he was just twenty-seven years old.4 Only a few years later, in 1615, having been called to be general-superintendent of the entire region of Coburg, Gerhard wrote a new church order (canon law) for the churches in his territory.5 Finally, Gerhard was called to a theological professorship at Jena and began his duties there in 1616. He remained at Jena until his death in 1637.6