Johann Adam Möhler

Johann Adam Möhler (6 May 1796 – 12 April 1838) was a German Roman Catholic theologian and priest associated with the Catholic Tübingen school. His main area of theology was in the comparison of Catholicism and Protestantism.

He was born at Igersheim in the Bailiwick of Franconia of the Teutonic Order (from 1809 on part of Württemberg), and after studying philosophy and theology in the lyceum at Ellwangen, entered the University of Tübingen in 1817. Ordained to the priesthood in 1819, he was appointed to serve in Riedlingen.

His lectures drew large audiences that included many Protestants. The controversy aroused by his Symbolik (1832) was such that in 1835, he left for the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Mainz, 1832; 8th edition, 1871–72; English translation by S. B. Robertson, 1843) This is a study of doctrinal differences between various Christian confessions. Central in this work is the anthropology and soteriology and the unity of the Church. Neue Untersuchungen der Lehrgegensätze zwischen den Katholiken und Protestanten (1834) – New studies of the doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants. Gesammelte Schriften u. Aufsätze, edited by Döllinger (1839) Patrologie, with Franz Xaver Reithmayr (1839).

A Biographie by Balthasar Wörner was published at Regensburg in 1866.

The Symbolik is his most famous work; the interest excited by it in Protestant circles is shown by the fact that within two years of its appearance it had elicited three replies of considerable importance, those namely of FC Baur, PK Marheineke and KI Nitzsch.