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Rh uncritical, and, if they admit dogmatic motives, insincere. His postulates were that the gospels must be examined as profane books are, without presumption of truth, and that space must be given for Christianity to evolve itself from the combination of exceedingly dissimilar elements. According to Baur the business of history is not so much with facts as with ideas ; and the idea, not the fact, of the Resurrection is the basis of the Christian faith. Doctrines are developed out of notions, not out of events. Whether or no the belief is true, he refuses to inquire. In the most characteristic passage ever written by a German historian, he declares that it is a question beyond the scope of history.

The view of the New Testament which the critics of Tübingen built up with an expenditure of intellectual force greater than Strauss had applied to demolition, was too deeply influenced by the specific negations of pantheism to live apart from their esoteric tenets. What was speculative in their system not only isolated them from the bulk of European science, but brought about divisions, and at last the dispersion of the school. Wherever their purpose was exclusively historical, they threw much light on matters which have been discussed for centuries; and their sagacity in the investigation of details has been fruitful for all men.

Their permanent action is less acknowledged in the foundation than in the development of Christianity. Baur's mastery in tracing the march of ideas through the ages, over the heads of men, was a thing new to literature. He maintained that the formation and growth of doctrine is consistent and normal, not accidental or arbitrary; and the impression made by his histories of the central dogmas appeared in many directions. Nearly half the books that have been written on dogmatic history came out in a space of six or seven years, under his impulse, and were often the work of men far from sharing his opinions. The inner circle of Lutheran orthodoxy has adopted from Tübingen the term—the Formation of truth (das Werden der Wahrheit), a notion which would have astonished Luther.