Tholuck, FRIEDRICH AUGUST, theologian and preacher, was born at Breslau, 30th March 1799, and studied at Breslau and Berlin. Oriental languages first attracted him, and he somewhat paradoxically maintained the superiority of Mohammedanism to Christianity. The influence of Neander and of a pious nobleman, Von Kottwitz (a Moravian Brother), produced a marked change in his feelings; and by 1825 he was a champion of that fervid but catholic evangelical Christianity to which all his later life, lectures, sermons, and published books were a testimony. In 1824 he was appointed extra-ordinary professor of Oriental Languages at Berlin, as successor to De Wette; in 1826 he was called to Halle as ordinary professor of Theology; and there, save for a year and a half (1827-28) spent by him as chaplain to the Prussian embassy at Rome, where Bunsen was ambassador, he spent the rest of his lovable and laborious life. At first he had difficulties in Halle, the tone of the university being strongly Rationalist, and his colleagues, Gesenius and Wegscheider, were distinctly hostile to Tho- luck's pietism; but ultimately he profoundly influenced the whole university in a direction favourable to devoutness, if not to old-fashioned orthodoxy. And his personal relations with the students instilled evangelical fervour into many successive generations of theological students from all parts of Germany, from Britain, and from America. Theologically he was not a strait-laced orthodoxist; he made very considerable concessions to criticism, and his line of thought was highly eclectic, containing elements from Pietism and Moravianism, from Hegel and Schleiermacher, but more still from the pectoral theology of Neander. As a writer and commentator he was rather suggestive and pregnant than profound or exhaustive. Of German theologians he is probably the one who has been most heartily accepted by English-speaking Protestants. He was a powerful preacher, and continued to lecture in spite of advancing years and enfeebled health till shortly before his death, 10th June 1877.
His earliest important work is Die Wahre Weihe des Zweiflers ('The True Consecration of the Sceptic,' published in reply to De Wette's Theodore in 1823, and frequently republished and translated with titles such as Sin and Redemption and Guido and Julius); others are an Anthology of Eastern Mysticism (1825); commentaries, which have been some of them translated into English two or three times over, on Romans, John's Gospel, The Sermon on the Mount, Hebrews, and Psalms; a reply to Strauss; Andachtsstunden (Eng. trans. 'Hours of Christian Devotion,' 1875); some volumes of sermons; miscellaneous essays; and contributions to church history—Lutherische Theologen Wittenbergs (1852), Das Akademische Leben des 18ten Jahrhunderts (1852-54), and the first part of a Geschichte des Rationalismus (1865, never finished). A complete edition of his works (11 vols.) appeared at Gotha in 1863-72; and he edited Calvin's Institutes and some of his commentaries. See a sketch by Kähler (1877); and a fuller life by Witte (2 vols. 1884-86).