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Johannes Andreas Quenstedt | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Johann Andreas Quenstedt | |
| Born | (1617-08-13)13 August 1617 |
| Died | 22 May 1688(1688-05-22) (aged 70) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theology |
| Doctoral advisor | Georg Calixt Christoph Notnagel |
Johannes Andreas Quenstedt (13 August 1617 – 22 May 1688) was a GermanLutheran dogmatician in theLutheran scholastic tradition.
Quenstedt was born atQuedlinburg, a nephew ofJohann Gerhard. He was educated at theUniversity of Helmstedt, 1637–1643, and at theUniversity of Wittenberg, 1644, where afterwards he lectured on geography; was adjunct professor in the philosophical faculty, 1646–1649; ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics and associate professor of theology, 1649–1660; and ordinary professor of theology, 1660–1688 until his death.
Quenstedt represents the old orthodox reaction after the period of reconstruction had set in. The fruit of his thirty years of work in the university lectureship was published in theTheologia didactico-polemica sive systema theologicum (Wittenberg, 1685; Leipzig, 1715), a work according to the strictest standard ofLutheran orthodoxy, based upon theTheologia, positiva acroamatica of his teacher,Johann Friedrich König, and characterized by external dogmatization instead of a development of the subject from within, and abounding in artfulscholastic refinements.
Quenstedt was noted among his contemporaries for his mild,irenic spirit and retiring, pious disposition, which is also shown by hisEthica pastorum et instructio cathedralis (1678), in which he advises to temper severity with gentleness in resistingheretics, and to distinguish between the tempters and the tempted; warns against pedantry in the pulpit; and recommends the reading ofJohann Arndt'sVom wahren Christenthum. His other works include theDialogus de patriis illustrium doctrina et scriptis virorum (Wittenberg, 1654), and a collection of dissertations,Exercitationes de theologia in genere ejusque principio sancta scriptura (1677).
Quenstedt believed inconditional election: "Faith, and that, too, as persevering or final faith, enters into the sphere of eternal election, not as already afforded, but as foreknown."[1]
This article incorporates text from a publication in thepublic domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1914). "Quenstedt, Johannes Andreas".New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls.