HERMES, GEORG (1775-1831)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 370 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG

HERMES, GEORG (1775-1831) , German Roman Catholic theologian, was born on the 22nd of April 1775, at Dreyerwalde, in Westphalia, and was educated at the gymnasium and university of Munster, in both of which institutions he afterwardstaught. In 182o he was appointed professor of theology at

Bonn

BONN

, where he died on the 26th of May 1831. Hermes had a devoted band of adherents, of whom the most notable was Peter Josef Elvenich (1796-1886), who became professor at

Breslau

BRESLAU (Polish Wraclaw)

in 1829, and in 187o threw in his lot with the Old Catholic

movement

MOVEMENT

. His works were Untersuchungen fiber die inhere Wahrheit des Christenthums (Munster, 18o5), and Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie, of which the first part, a philosophical introduction, was published in 1819, the second part, on positive theology, in.1829. The Einleitung was never completed. His Christkatholische Dogmatik was published, from his lectures, after his death by two of his students, Achterfeld and Braun (3 vols., 18311834).
The Einleitung is a remarkable

work

WORK

, both in itself and in its effect upon Catholic theology in Germany. Few works of modern times have excited a more keen and

bitter

BITTER, KARL THEODORE FRANCIS (1867– )

controversy. Hermes himself was very largely under the influence of the Kantian and Fichtean ideas, and though in the philosophical portion of his Einleitung he criticizes both these thinkers severely, rejects their

doctrine

DOCTRINE

of the moral law as the sole guarantee for the existence of God, and condemns their restricted view of the possibility and nature of

revelation

REVELATION, BOOK OF

, enough remained of purely speculative material to render his

system

SYSTEM

obnoxious to his

church

. After his death, the contests between his followers and their opponents grew so

bitter

BITTER, KARL THEODORE FRANCIS (1867– )

that the dispute was referred to the papal see. The judgment was adverse, and on the 25th of September 1835 a papal

bull

condemned both parts of the Einleitung and the first volume of the Dogmatik. Two months later the remaining volumes of the Dogmatik were likewise condemned. The controversy did not cease, and in 1845 a systematic attempt was made anonymously by F. X. Werner to examine and refute the Hermesian doctrines, as contrasted with the orthodox Catholic faith (Der Hermesianismus, 1845). In 1847 the condemnation of 1835 was confirmed by Pius IX.
See K. Werner, Geschichte der katholischen Theologie (1866), pp. 4.05 sqq.

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