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Johann August Wilhelm Neander (17 January 1789 14 July 1850) was a German theology and church historian.
Neander's conversion has been likened to the conversion of Saint Paul of Tarsus, due to the impact that his new faith had on his person, his work, his relationship with his students, and his attitude toward church history.
He was baptized on 25 February 1806 at the age of 17 and adopted the name of Neander, or "new man" on becoming a Protestantism.
After university, he returned to Hamburg and passed his examination for the Christian ministry. However, after eighteen months, he decided on an academic career at Heidelberg where two vacancies had occurred in the theological faculty of the university. He became a teacher of theology in 1811 and became a professor the following year.
He published a second monograph, Der Heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter in 1813, and a third Gnosticism in 1818 ( Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme). A more extended monograph followed in 1822, Der Heilige John Chrysostom und die Kirche besonders des Orients in dessen Zeitalter, with one on Tertullian in 1824 ( Antignostikus). In 1824 he also cofounded the Berlin Missionary Society with Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach, August von Bethmann-Hollweg and others in Berlin. (1984). 9780796900104, Human Sciences Research Council, Institute for Historial Research. ISBN 9780796900104
Neander began his work on Christian history in 1824 and published the first volume of Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche in 1825. The other volumes followed at intervals with the fifth in 1842, focusing on the period of Boniface VIII. A posthumous volume published in 1852, finished with the period of the Council of Basel.
While working on these volumes, Neander also published several other books including;
Several of his books went through multiple editions and were translated into English.
His grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof I der Jerusalems - und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. I of the congregations of Jerusalem's Church and Deutscher Dom) in Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor.
After his death, a succession of volumes representing his various courses of lectures appeared (1856-1864), in addition to the Lectures on the History of Dogma ( Theologische Vorlesungen), which were edited by J. L. Jacobi in 1857.
This period in Neander's life had a profound effect on both his personal faith and his attitude towards life in general. Neander was often described as ‘wide-hearted’, ‘truthful’, ‘sincere’, ‘free from all the stuff of vanity’, ‘affectionate’, ‘innocent and pure of heart’.
Neander felt indebted to his teacher and later his friend and colleague Schleiermacher.
“To exhibit the history of the church of Christ, as a living witness of the divine power of Christianity; as a school of Christian experience; a voice, a sounding through the ages, of instruction, of doctrine, and of reproof, for all who are disposed to listen.”
His guiding principle in dealing both with history and with the contemporary condition of the church was "that Christianity has room for the various tendencies of human nature, and aims at permeating and glorifying them all; that according to the divine plan these various tendencies are to occur successively and simultaneously and to counterbalance each other, so that the freedom and variety of the development of the spiritual life ought not to be forced into a single dogmatic form" (Otto Pfleiderer).
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