Faith and History on the Eve of Enlightenment: Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Gottfried Arnold, and the History of Heretics

Abstract

When it first appeared in Germany, Gottfried Arnold's History of heretics (1699) was a publishing sensation, immediately causing a stir due to its radical reinterpretation of the Christian past. Numerous scholars wrote against it, but the most determined was the Orthodox Lutheran Ernst Salomon Cyprian, who considered the central thesis of the work – that the history of the Christian Church was a history of decline – a deliberate attack on the principles of Lutheran belief. In Cyprian's view, Arnold's reading of the past was shaped by a cast of personal faith which not only rewrote the Protestant narrative of Christian history, but threatened the very fabric of Lutheran belief.