CALIXTUS (properly CALLISEN), Georg, ga'Org, German clergyman, the most able and enlightened theologian of the Lutheran Church in the 17th century: b. Medelbye, Schleswig, 14 Dec. 1586; d. 19 March 1656. In 1609 he vis ited the universities of the south of Germany; in 1612 those of Holland, Britain and France, where his intercourse with the different re ligious parties and the greatest scholars of his time developed that independence and liberality of opinion for which he was distinguished. In 1614 he was made professor of theology at Helmstedt, and he held this post till his death. His treatises on the authority of the Holy Scriptures, transubstantiation, celibacy, su premacy of the Pope, and the Lord's Supper belong, even according to the judgment of learned Roman Catholics, to the most profound and acute writings against Roman Catholicism. But his genius and the depth of his exigetic and historical knowledge exposed him to the perse cutions of the zealots of his time. His asser
tion that the points of difference between Cal vinists and Lutherans were of less importance than the doctrines in which they were agreed, and that the doctrine of the Trinity was less distinctly expressed in the Old Testament than in the New, and his recommendation of good works, drew upon him the reproach of heresy. He made Christian morality a distinct branch of science, and, by reviving the study of the Christian fathers and of the history of the Church, prepared the way for Spener, Thomas ius and Semler. Consult Henke, E. L. W., and seine Zeit' (Halle 1853-56); Dowding, W. C., (German Theology during the Thirty Years' War); The Life and Cor respondence of G. Calixtus' (London 1863).