Joch, Johann Georg

Joch, Johann Georg, a German theologian, born at Rotenburg, in Franconia, in 1685, became professor of theology at Wittenberg, and died in 1731. To him belongs the credit of having been the first to assert the superiority of practical Christianity over the then prevailing pietism, in the principal stronghold of Lutheran theology, the cathedra Lutheri of Wittenberg. While yet at Jena, the center of pietism in the beginning of the 18th century, he was, both as a student and as private tutor, one of the disciples of Spener, and an ardent pietist; but when he became superintendent of the gymnasium of Dortmund, where dogmatics and polemics alone filled the churches and the halls of learning, Joch turned his attention to the subjects of conversion and second birth. He was of course involved in a controversy, but he seems to have been quite successful, for in 1726 he was made a professor of theology at Wittenberg. — Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v. See Augusti, Der Pietismus in Jena, etc. (Jena, 1837) Göbel, Gesch. d. Christl. Lebens in d. rh.-westph. ev. Kirche.