Religion Past and Present
Get access
Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
| Help us improve our service |
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Fasting
(4,168 words)
[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Old Testament – III. Christianity – IV. Ethics – V. Judaism – VI. Islam
I. History of Religions “Fasting” is a universally attested cultural technique to produce an expansion of mental and social control, power, or awareness (Asceticism) by restricting the intake of food. Many different types of and reasons for fasting can be found in the history of religions, and they are combined in various ways. Several studies have been produced with regard to individual religions …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fatalism
(359 words)
[German Version] For modern fatalism, because all actions are determined in a way that can be demonstrated scientifically, alleged freedom thus merely represents “false consciousness.” Causal determinism differentiates modern fatalism from earlier assumptions of blind fate and destiny (
moíra). G.W. Leibniz still tried to delimit his own concept of fate from determinism. During the subsequent period, theories came to differentiate such notions as practical fatalistic-deterministic worldviews. Marxism, for example, views all actions a…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fatality
(385 words)
[German Version] The term fatality can be defined in two ways. First, it approximates the content of the Greek understanding of “fate” (Heraclitus, Stoics). Accordingly, the human being is part of a determined course of events (Determinism) expressed in the natural laws of the world and the social order. These natural laws, which the Stoics primarily understood causally as
heimarmene, an “uninterrupted series of causes,” to which human understanding is also subject. Human fatality consists in finding oneself to be part of a largely determined world, the…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fate
(2,647 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics – IV. Ethics
I. Religious Studies In every age and culture, people have felt the need to explain inescapable situations and unforeseeable events. From the perspective of cultural anthropology, however, this need does not make fate a clearly definable concept; it is instead a summary term encompassing a multiplicity of culturally divergent ideas to which individual religions often assign very different values. The concept of fat…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Father Deities
(2,241 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Old Testament
I. Religious Studies Deities defined by emphasis on their relationship to ancestors (“fathers,” see also Ancestors, Cult of) are historically and ethnographically attested in Near Eastern and East African cultures. Usually named in the form “God of X” or “God of my/your father” or “God of my/your fathers,” they can also be known by a specific proper name. The cult of such father deities occurs – independently of a specific…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Father Divine
(143 words)
[German Version] (c. 1880 – Sep 10, 1965, Philadelphia), African American religious leader who founded ¶ the Peace Mission movement. Born George Baker, in 1914 he took the name Major J. Divine and started his movement in New York, from where it spread nationwide. Banquet meals, served without cost to all comers, were a central part of the movement that drew a large following during the Great Depression. The movement also provided inexpensive housing and jobs in many movement-owned businesses. Divine's followers…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fatherland
(753 words)
[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics
I. Dogmatics Since the 18th century, terms such as fatherland, love for the fatherland and patriotism have played a central role in the proclamation of all Christian churches and in the discourse of academic theologians, and have also influenced debates on Jewish self-understanding at least since M. Mendelssohn. In view of the striking methodical reticence of scholarship in church history and the history of theology, there is a deficit of historical terminolog…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fatima
(135 words)
[German Version] Fatima is a Marian pilgrimage site in Portugal, where Mary appeared to the children Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto, and his sister Jacinta between May and October 1917. In her appearance, she called for penance, the rosary prayer, and atonement communion, and also asked that the world and Russia be consecrated to her immaculate heart (Sacred Heart of Mary). This consecration was carried out in 1942 by Pius XII and in 1981 by John Paul II. The bishop of Leiria confirmed the even…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faulhaber, Michael
(210 words)
[German Version] (Mar 5, 1869, Klosterheidenfeld – Jun 12, 1952, Munich). Faulhaber was ordained priest in 1892, attained the Dr.theol. in 1895, became professor of Old Testament in Strasbourg in 1903, bishop of Speyer in 1911, also deputy field provost of the Bavarian Army in 1914, archbishop of Munich (I) and Freising in 1917, and finally cardinal in 1921. He was widely known as a brilliant speaker and powerful preacher. A resolute monarchist, he kept his distance from the Weimar Republic. Despi…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faulkner, William
(208 words)
[German Version] (Sep 25, 1897 New Albany, MS – Jul 6, 1962, Byhalia, MS) was one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. His stories, all set in ¶ the deep South of the USA, were preoccupied with themes of memory, history, guilt, and religion. After training with the British RAF during the World War I, Faulkner returned to his native Mississippi and began to write, first poetry and then stories. His first novel,
Soldier's Pay (1926) reflects on the unease felt by Southern soldiers returning from the war. His later novels develop the complicated lives of …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fauré, Gabriel-Urbain
(200 words)
[German Version] (May 12, 1845, Pamiers, France – Nov 4, 1924, Paris), leading French composer of his day, whose students were later to leave a profound impact on 20th-century French music. At a very young age he entered the Ecole Niedermeyer to study church music (1854–1864). He received piano classes from Camille Saint-Saens and studied the music of R. Wagner. In 1866 he was appointed organist in Rennes, working at various Parisian churches from 1870. Fauré was given a composition class at the C…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faure, Jean
(317 words)
[German Version] (Sep 1, 1907, Saint-Sébastien-de-Cordéac, France – Jan 13, 1967, Aix-les-Bains, France). Faure was the son of the agronomist and Protestant missionary Félix Faure in Gabon, who came into conflict with A. Schweitzer concerning the capacity of ¶ Africans for development. From 1933, Faure worked as a missionary in Togo. He defended the independence of the Togolese church, which it had
de facto acquired after the expulsion of the German missionaries during World War I, against the Société des Missions Evangéliques de Paris (SMEP). At that time,…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Fausel, Heinrich
(195 words)
[German Version] (Nov 15, 1900, Reutlingen – Feb 5, 1967, Tübingen), a Wurttembergian pastor and theologian, and a war veteran. He was pastor in Heimsheim (Württemberg) from 1927 to 1946, and served as principal of the Protestant Theological Seminary in Maulbronn from 1946 to 1963. He became Dr.theol. in 1956 and gave lectures in Wurttembergian church history at the University of Tübingen in 1957, where he was made honorary professor in 1963. An honorary citizen of Heimsheim, he was married to Hel…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faustinus
(166 words)
[German Version] (the Luciferian). Together with an unknown Marcellinus, the Luciferian (Lucifer of Cagliari), Roman presbyter Faustinus, who supported the Roman bishop Liberius during the latter's exile (355–358), assisted Ursinus against Damasus in the papal succession conflict of 366/67; from exile in Eleutheropolis in Palestine, sometime before 384 in
De confessione, he pleaded for the intervention of the emperors Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius. Faustinus's theological position in this confession and in his essay
De trinitate, which was written at the behest…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faustus of Byzantium
(180 words)
[German Version] A
History of
Armenia under the Arsacid dynasty, covering the years 330 to 387, is attributed to a person of this name. Despite attempts to postulate an initial composition in Greek or Syriac, it is now considered to be an originally Armenian work. It represents an anonymous compilation of epic narratives from the late 5th century. Neither the first name nor the surname, which is usually thought be a toponym, corresponds to historical realities. Seen in an Iranian c…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faustus of Mileve
(161 words)
[German Version] (d. before 400), of pagan background from Mileve (Mila, Algeria). Following an ¶ extended stay in Rome in 382/83 as a Manichaean bishop (Manichaeism), he met Augustine (Augustine of Hippo) in Carthage. Though considered a spiritual authority, he was unable to allay Augustine's doubts regarding the intellectual tenability of the Manichaean myth. Banished presumably in 386 on charges raised by Catholic Christians, he was already pardoned in 387. In a code of instructions for disputations of Mani…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Faustus of Riez
(440 words)
[German Version] (c. 405, Britain? – c. 490, Riez), abbot of Lérins (from 433) and (before 462) bishop of Riez (Reji). His renown is based primarily on his doctrine of grace. In 474, at the request of two synods in Arles (Homoeans) and Lyon, he wrote the essay
De gratia and argued for a middle way between the predestinationism of a certain Lucidus, which was strongly influenced by Augustine, and Pelagianism (Pelagius). The anathemata with which Lucidus retracted also stemmed form Faustus (DH 330–342 =
Ep. 2; see also
Ep. 1). While Augustine considered “humanity after the fall” to be…
Source:
Religion Past and Present