QUENSTEDT, JOHANN ANDREAS

Lutheran theologian and dogmatician; b. Quedlinburg, Aug. 13, 1617; d. Wittenberg, May 22, 1688. He was educated at the University of Helmstädt (1637–43), where he came under the influence of Georg Calixtus, whose heterodox ideas he later refuted. From 1644 to the time of his death, Quenstedt held various academic positions at the University of Wittenberg. He published the results of his years of teaching in Theologia didacticopolemica sive systema theologicum (Wittenberg 1685; Leipzig 1715). This represents a type of reaction to the reconstruction of dogma that had been begun by Veit Ludwig von Seckendorf (1626–92) and that was symptomatic of the intellectual revolution taking place throughout Europe. On every subject discussed there is first the presentation of theses, followed by their exposition and proof, and then the discussion of various difficulties and questions that are suggested. Because of this style the work became so thoroughly a systematized treatise on Lutheran theology that Quenstedt has been frequently called "the bookkeeper of Lutheran orthodoxy." His definitions and theses are, however, constructed almost entirely on an earlier work, entitled Theologia positiva acroamatica, by J. F. Koenig (1619–64).

Bibliography: j. c. erdmann, Lebensbeschreibungen und litterarische Nachrichten von den wittenbergschen Theologen (Wittenberg 1804). f. a. g. tholuck, Der Geist der lutherischen Theologen Wittenbergs (Hamburg 1852). f. lau, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7 v. (3rd ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 5:735.

[c. j. berschneider]