Johann Adam Möhler


Johann Adam Möhler was a German Roman Catholic theologian.
He was born at Igersheim in the Duchy of Württemberg, and after studying philosophy and theology in the lyceum at Ellwangen, entered the University of Tübingen in 1817. Ordained to the priesthood in 1819, he was appointed to a curacy. He returned to Tübingen where he became privatdozent in 1825, an associate professor of theology in 1826 and a full professor in 1828.
His lectures drew large audiences that included many Protestants. The controversy aroused by his "Symbolik" was such that in 1835 he left for the University of Munich, because of polemics with the Protestant Tübingen theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur. In 1838 he was appointed to the deanery of Würzburg, but died shortly afterwards.
He died young but was very influential for other theologians, such as Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and others.
As a church historian, he has a more confessional and conservative orientation and organic thinking.

Works

Möhler wrote:
A Biographie by Balthasar Wörner was published at Regensburg in 1866.
The "Symbolik" is his most famous work; the interest excited by it in Protestant circles is shown by the fact that within two years of its appearance it had elicited three replies of considerable importance, those namely of FC Baur, PK Marheineke and KI Nitzsch. Although characterized by learning and acuteness, as well as by considerable breadth of spiritual sympathy, it was not accepted by Catholics themselves as embodying an accurate objective view of the doctrine of their church.
The liberal school of thought of which Möhler was a prominent exponent was discouraged in official circles. Protestants complained that the author failed to grasp the Reformation as a movement, and dwelled on the doctrinal shortcomings, inconsistencies and contradictions of its leaders.