Encyclopedia of Christianity Online
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Subject: Religious Studies
Editors: Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milič Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan and Lukas Vischer
The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
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The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Foot Washing
(1,098 words)
Foot washing in the Orient is a common, understood, and acceptable practice. The wearing of open sandals, the dry climate, and dusty paths make it so. In the Greco-Roman world, foot washing was done for several reasons: (1) as a ritual; (2) domestically, for reasons of personal comfort and hygiene; (3) as an expression of hospitality, a gesture of greeting, or in preparation for a banquet; and (4) as a service by servants or slaves. Foot washing as an obligation of hospitality occurs early in the OT—in Gen. 18:4 with Abraham, and in 19:2 with Lot. Abraham’s servant is provided with wate…
Force, Violence, Nonviolence
(3,558 words)
1. Theology and Ethics 1.1.
Term “Force” is a term with many nuances. In the sense of violence it can denote unlawful acts that threaten, harm, or destroy the life or liberty (freedom) of a person (or animal), the property of someone, or social order. It may also be used for the lawful force that a government must have in order to give stability to society. The lack of precision derives from the matter itself and is reflected in Greek and Latin as well as English, French, and German. In using the term…
Foreigners, Aliens
(2,149 words)
1. Modern Problems and Issues The term “foreigners” defines individuals or social groups in relation to a particular state. People become foreigners when they stay in a country other than their own. Depending on the circumstances in the host country, their presence may or may not be welcome. The social problem involved in the concept is twofold: foreigners live as aliens, as those who do not belong; and they are seen by residents to be aliens, not to belong. Different situations give rise to specific…
Foreword
(1,248 words)
In every field of thought and scholarship there come moments when it is time to summarize the present state of research and reflection and thereby to provide a starting point for the next stage. In the natural sciences and some of the mathematically oriented social sciences, where the usual medium of publication is the scientific paper, disseminated as quickly as possible, these moments represent the opportunity to put out a book; but in the humanities, where the full-length scholarly article an…
Forgiveness
(2,690 words)
1. Term and Problems Forgiveness is the readiness to pardon faults (Guilt). More than restitution or repayment, it seeks to restore fellowship. The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer refers to it as something that God does and that we ought to do in return. But what does Christian forgiveness mean when seen in the light of social, political, philosophical, psychological, and religious theories for the overcoming of guilt? Our own dealing with guilt is confronted by the external pronouncement that t…
Formula of Concord
(1,918 words)
1. Background The Book of Concord (1580), as a collection of the most important 16th-century Lutheran confessional writings (Confessions and Creeds), has formal validity to this day in most Lutheran churches. The final text in that collection, the Formula of Concord (1577), by claiming to repeat and explain the Augsburg Confession, using both affirmation (“we believe, teach, and confess …”) and negation (“we reject and condemn …”), defines afresh the main articles of the Christian religion as M. Luther (1483–1546), P. Melanchthon (1497–1560), and other Reformers expounded them. Alr…
France
(3,257 words)
1. The Church in France It is hard to say how many of the nearly 60 million people in France belong to a church, for official statistics do not list church membership. The largest church, the Roman Catholic, is uncertain of its own precise membership. There are no church taxes (Church Finances), nor is there legal membership (Church Membership). If we take baptism as a standard, then most people (80 percent) belong to the church. Even anticlericalists want their children baptized, and the church does…
Franciscans
(2,688 words)
1. Francis and Beginnings Francis of Assisi was born in 1181/82, died on October 3, 1226, and was canonized on July 15, 1228; his feast day is October 4. Baptized Giovanni, he was the son of a cloth merchant, Pietro Bernardone, who knew France well through business journeys and thus called his son Francesco. He was expected to carry on his father’s trade but preferred to seek social advancement. A crisis in his life led him to renounce the world in 1206 and to gather a brotherhood around him. Innoce…
Francis of Assisi
(718 words)
Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226), baptized Giovanni Bernardone, was the founder of the Franciscan Order. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Peter Bernardone, and his French wife, Pica, Francis experienced the kind of wild youth appropriate for a later saint. After participating in a war between his hometown Assisi and Perugia in 1202 and being held captive for a year, and after a lengthy illness, he underwent a conversion (§1) during the years 1204–7, the details of which are difficult to unde…
Francke, August Hermann
(851 words)
August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) was a Lutheran-Pietist theologian, pedagogue, and social reformer. Francke, the son of a jurist, was born in Lübeck and spent his childhood in Gotha. He was early destined for spiritual office, as well as for scholarship, studying in Erfurt and Kiel (1679–82), Hamburg (1682), and Leipzig (from 1684). In 1685 he received his master of philosophy degree on the basis of a work on Hebrew grammar and acquired authorization to teach. As a counter to instructional theology that was reduced largely to dogmatics, in 1686 he founded the
Collegium philobiblicum, f…
Free Church
(1,011 words)
The term “free church” dates from 1843, when Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) led 474 like-minded ministers out of the Church of Scotland to found the Free Church. They were protesting against state control of the church. In 1892 English Nonconformists ventured to adopt the term when Presbyterians, Congregationalists (Congregationalism), Baptists, and Methodists (Methodism) formed the National Free Church Council, claiming to be no less a church than the established Church of England (Anglican Commun…
Freedom
(4,234 words)
1. Philosophical 1.1.
Etymology and Concept With related terms in other languages, the word “free” derives from the Indo-European root *prai-, meaning “protect, spare, like, love.” The Latin word ¶ for “freedom” is libertas, the Greek, eleutheria (esp. in the sense of political freedom). The latter occurred for the first time in Pindar (ca. 522-ca. 438), who said of Hieron I (ca. 540–467/466), founder of the city of Etna, that he founded it “with ordered freedom” (Pyth. 1.61). The eleutheroi were free persons who, as distinct from slaves, lived in their fatherland …
Free Religion (Freireligiöse)
(555 words)
1. So-called Free Religion is a concern of groups, especially in Germany, that want freedom
in religion, not freedom
from religion, which for them means no dogmatic or organizational commitments in their religion. Although rejecting dogmas and hierarchical structures, they form a union with special features and its own history. Free Religion has both Catholic and Protestant roots in German Catholicism and Protestant free churches (the so-called Friends of Light, or Protestant Friends). German Catholicism was an early liberal movement started as…
Freethinkers
(742 words)
1. Goals Freethinkers represent a cultural, political, and philosophical movement, atheistic in belief and made up of various groupings that seek to rid people of religious and scientific errors and prejudices. This movement rejects the teachings and ties of religious institutions. The various groups stress the separation of church and state, oppose the traditional influence of the Christian church on public life, advocate cremation instead of church burial (Funeral), oppose church-sanctioned war, seek the legal recognition of their so…
French Missions
(781 words)
A sense of responsibility for foreign mission developed in France after the great upheavals of the French Revolution of 1789 (Mission 3). After many years of mistrust and indeed persecution, the Lutheran and Reformed churches now had a guaranteed right to existence. They used their new freedom of action to found the Société des Missions Évangéliques de Paris chez des Peuples Non-chrétiens (SMEP), which could take part in the missionary movement without official restriction. The birthday of this society was November 4, 1822, in Paris. Originally the SMEP did not plan to send its …