BAUER, BRUNO (1809–1882), left-wing Hegelian critic of the Bible, Christianity, and Prussian society. Bauer began his career as a conservative (right-wing) Hegelian theologian. His earliest writings on the Old Testament (1838) argued that the Hebraic idea of a deity distinct from creation gradually developed toward the Christian doctrine of the immanence of God and humanity. As a Hegelian, he interpreted this to mean that the finite had become conscious of itself as infinite. In an essay of 1840 he also argued that the union of the Reformed and Lutheran churches in 1818 further confirmed the Hegelian view that the Prussian state had become the embodiment of true spiritual life.

Appointed to the faculty of Bonn University in 1839, he turned his attention to the New Testament and wrote what is now considered his most important work: Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker. In it he tried to show that biblical criticism...