Christoph Gottlob Jonathan Hoffmann

Gottlob Christoph Jonathan Hoffmann (December 2, 1815 - December 8, 1885) was born in Leonberg in the Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany. His parents were Beate Baumann (1774-1852) and Gottieb Wilhelm Hoffmann (1771-1846), chairman of the Unitas Fratrum congregation in Korntal.

Christoph Hoffmann had a Pietist-Christian background and enjoyed a Christian education with the Brethren congregation in Korntal. As a young man he studied theology in Tübingen. An opponent of the much better known liberal theologian David Friedrich Strauss, Hoffmann was elected to the First National German Parliament, which met in Frankfurt am Main in 1848.

The failure of his efforts to create a better Christian State through politics caused him to return to the roots of Christianity as expressed by Jesus. He became convinced that Jesus had called for a radical change of attitude in people. The better state of being after such a change of attitude he saw as the Kingdom of God which was to be established. To this end he applied for the position of a missionary inspector with the Protestant St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission of Basel in 1853, however, disappointedly quitting service after two years.

Hoffmann dedicated his life to collecting people striving for such a "kingdom" and setting up communities in which their striving would express itself in daily life. Initially (1854) known as the Friends of Jerusalem, the group in June 1861 formed itself into an independent Christian religious organisation known as Deutscher Tempel, its members identified themselves as Templers. In 1868 the Templers started to create settlements in Palestine.

The Templers could buy in Jaffa some houses and land from failed colonists around George Adams, returning to the USA in 1869. On 5 March 1869 also Peter Martin Metzler, a missionary of St. Chrischona and personal acquaintance of Hoffmann from his times at the Pilgrims' Mission, sold his Jaffa-based mission station, including an infirmary and most of his real estate and other enterprises to the new colonists, before he left Jaffa.

While the Lutheran Evangelical State Church in Württemberg condemned and fought the Templers as apostates, the Prussian position was somewhat milder. Their settlement in the Holy Land found a warm support through Wilhelm Hoffmann (*1806-1873*), who was no apostate from the official church, like his younger brother Christoph.[3] Wilhelm Hoffmann served as one of the royal Prussian court preachers at the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church in Berlin and was a co-founder and first president of Jerusalem's Association (German: Jerusalemsverein), a charitable organisation founded on 2 December 1852 to support Samuel Gobat's effort as bishop of the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric of Jerusalem. Between 1866 and 1869 Wilhelm Hoffmann dispatched his son Carl Hoffmann (1836-1903) as pastor of the German Protestant congregation of Jerusalem.

Hoffmann fell out with the Temple Society's co-leader Georg David Hardegg (*1812-1879*), so that in June 1874 the Temple denomination underwent a schism with Hardegg and about a third of the Templers seceding from the Temple Society and later mostly returning to an official German Protestant church body. Hoffmann died in the Templer settlement Rephaim near Jerusalem on 8 December 1885.

Hoffmann's literary output focusses on his vision of a New Jerusalem, a community based Kingdom of God that would eventually spread over all the nations:

• He initiated publication of the religious sentinel Die Süddeutsche Warte in 1845, which later became Die Warte des Tempels and under that name is still, 161 years later, pubslished today as the official voice of the Temple Society.
• In Occident and Orient, Part 1, 2 and 3 first published in 1875, he produced a blueprint for community based social conditions leading towards a kingdom of God in the Middle East
• Mein Weg nach Jerusalem came out in 1884 and can be seen as an autobiography of his struggle to bring his vision to reality.
• with five Sendschreiben produced over the years Hoffmann tried to face some of the religious and social difficulties arising at the time.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Hoffmann

Gottlob Christoph Jonathan Hoffmann (* 2. Dezember 1815 in Leonberg; † 8. Dezember 1885 in Rephaim bei Jerusalem) war Stifter der deutschen Tempelgesellschaft.

Christoph Hoffmann, Bruder des evangelischen Theologen Wilhelm Hoffmann und Sohn von Gottlieb Wilhelm Hoffmann und dessen Frau, studierte Evangelische Theologie, Philosophie und Geschichte am Evangelischen Stift in Tübingen. 1840 wurde er Repetent am Evangelischen Stift, 1841 Lehrer auf dem Salon bei Ludwigsburg, 1848 Abgeordneter zur deutschen Nationalversammlung, 1853 bis 1855 Vorsteher der Evangelistenschule in St. Chrischona bei Basel und erließ 1854 in Verbindung mit Christoph Paulus einen Aufruf zu einer großartigen Auswanderung der Gläubigen nach Palästina, um daselbst mit allen frommen Juden und Katholiken das Gesetz des Mose zu erfüllen.

Vorläufig wurde damit ein Anfang in Kirschenhardthof bei Burgstetten gemacht, hierauf 1861 ein abermaliger Aufruf an die Christenheit zur Stiftung eines Zentralheiligtums in Jerusalem erlassen. 1858 machte er seine erste Forschungsreise nach Palästina, wohin er 1868 übersiedelte.

Seit 1869 kam es zur Gründung der gut organisierten Kolonien zu Haifa, Jaffa und Sarona in Palästina, und 1878 wurde die Zentralleitung des deutschen Tempels nach Jerusalem verlegt.

Da aber der Stifter in der Süddeutschen Warte und in seinem Buch Occident und Orient (Stuttgart 1875) den trinitarischen und christologischen Grundlehren der Kirche den Krieg erklärte, sagte sich der Reichsbrüderbund zu Haifa unter dem Tempelvorsteher Georg David Hardegg (1812–1879) von dem Haupttempel los.

Hoffmann gab heraus Bibelforschungen (1882–1884, 2 Bände) und seine Selbstbiographie Mein Weg nach Jerusalem (1882–1884, 2 Bände).

Quelle: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Hoffmann_%28Theologe%29