German theologian, born at Kübelingen, Brunswick, on the 17th of September 1771, studied theology at Helmstädt, was tutor in a Hamburg family 1795–1805, Repetent at Göttingen, professor of theology at Rinteln in Hesse (1806–1815), and at Halle from 1815. In 1830 he (with his colleague Wilhelm Gesenius) was threatened with deposition for teaching rationalism, and though he retained his office he lost his influence, which passed to F. A. Tholuck and Julius Müller. He died on the 27th of January 1849.
His chief works were Über die von der neuesten Philosophie geforderte Trennung der Mora! von der Religion (1804); Einleitung in das Evangelium Johannis (1806); and Institutiones theologicae dogmaticae (1815), to which W. Steiger’s Kritik des Rationalismus in Wegscheider’s Dogmatik (1830) was a reply.
