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
Trauma
(733 words)
“Trauma,” which derives from the Greek word for wound, hurt, or defeat, denotes either physical-organic injury (e.g., to the skull or brain) or psychological hurts that are more than the ego can cope with and that plunge one into a helpless panic, for example, the sexual seduction of children (Childhood), which S. Freud (1856–1939) regarded as the decisive factor in neurosis. When Freud abandoned this monocausal hypothesis in favor of an unconscious infantile fantasying, he still did not contest the pathogenic role of traumatizing in actual life. Psychologically, no “objective” in…
Trent, Council of
(2,867 words)
The Council of Trent (1545–63, with two breaks of several years each; Councils of the Church 4) was the official answer of the Roman Catholic Church to the Reformation and its questions to theology, its preaching, and its ecclesiology. By means of definitions, judgments, and reforming decrees, and in spite of interruptions and internal worries, the council brought about a limited but effective renewal of the church (Catholic Reform and Counterreformation) and created presuppositions for self-assurance and resolution that initiated a new stage in its history. 1. Prior History In 1518…
Tribal Religions
(1,733 words)
1. History of Research and Definition The religions of so-called primitive peoples, which G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831; Hegelianism; Idealism 6) would not recognize as religion according to his definition, became an object of research in the 19th century, not on their own account, but to offer material for wide-ranging theories and to provide an answer to the question of the origin of religion as such. The presuppositions of the Enlightenment and the concept of evolution included the idea that these reli…
Tribes of Israel
(2,334 words)
1. History and Results of Research From Numbers to 1 Kgs. 11:30, Israel is portrayed as a community of 12 tribes. Discrepancies in the lists (either with Levi and Joseph, the sons of Jacob, or without Levi and with Ephraim and Manasseh, the grandchildren of Jacob), as well as an older system of 10 tribes of Israel (Judges 5 [without Judah, Simeon, Gad, and Manasseh, but with Machir and Gilead]; 1 Kgs. 11:31) plus Judah (1 Kgs. 11:32), show the 12-tribe system to be a recent, theoretical construct (see 4). In their material culture and linguistically, the tribes of the 12…
Trinidad and Tobago
(1,183 words)
1. General Situation The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelago nation in the southern Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. A former British colony independent since 1962, the country consists of two main islands, of which Trinidad is the larger at 4,828 sq. km. (1,864 sq. mi.) and with 96 percent of the population; Tobago is the smaller at 300 sq. km. (116 sq. mi.), and 21 other islands complete the chain. Eighty percent of its heterogeneous population are of African or Indian descent, while the rest are of diverse or mixed European, Chinese, Arab…
Trinity
(9,353 words)
Overview The Trinity, as it came to be understood in the formative period of both the Greek and Latin churches, is a uniquely Christian doctrine and one whose sheer difficulty indicates that the God under discussion cannot be fully grasped by the human mind. One of the early benefits, and yet an additional difficulty, of conceiving God as Trinity was the gradual emergence of the concept of
person (Self). In both the divine case and the human case, “person” has its own mystery and eludes strict definition. The Trinity is one of the beliefs that arise from the incarnation of Christ.…
Troeltsch, Ernst
(1,121 words)
Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) was a Protestant theologian, philosopher of culture, and politician. His theological/philosophical works, although many-faceted, were characterized by one theme: given the historicist insight that all historical reality is relative, with the resulting loss of normative validity (Relativism), he sought to identify new, binding values in historically given cultural contexts. Troeltsch, born on February 17, 1865, in (Augsburg-) Haunstetten, was the eldest son of the medical doctor Ernst Troeltsch. His family belonged to t…
Trust
(1,713 words)
1. Psychological and Theological Aspects
1.1. The term “trust” proves, especially since E. Erikson’s (1902–94) creation of the concept of “primal trust” (Ego Psychology; Identity), to be a mechanism for reducing both social (N. Luhmann) and theological complexity. It describes “the basic process between man and God. Man’s relationship to God stands and falls therefore with trust in God” (E. Jüngel, 196). As a central category of theological anthropology, it is based on the psychological idea that the…
Truth
(5,869 words)
1. Biblical Aspects 1.1.
OT The Heb. word for truth is
ʾemet, indicating something firm, reliable, and trustworthy or durable. True words or events may be denoted (Deut. 22:20; 1 Kgs. 10:6), or authentic guarantees (Josh. 2:12). The truth may be that of a revelation (Dan. 10:1) or of wisdom (Prov. 22:21). The antithesis is what is false, deceptive, or unstable. Those who tell the truth are people of truth (Gen. 42:16). The reference may be to the truth of their statements or to their inner truthfulness (1 Kgs. 17:24). The word
ʾemet often occurs for the truthfulness of God and is somet…
Tunisia
(721 words)
1. General Situation The Tunisian Republic, located in North Africa between Algeria in the west and Libya in the southeast, borders the Mediterranean. Mountains in the north overlook a hot, dry central plain that merges into the Saharan desert in the south. In the 12th century b.c., the Tunisian coast was colonized by the Phoenicians. They built the city of Carthage (near the modern capital, Tunis), from where the brilliant general Hannibal invaded Italy in 218 b.c. Carthage eventually fell to the Romans in 146 b.c., and the area, the “Province of Africa,” became one of the gran…
Turkey
(2,362 words)
The Republic of Turkey, with a population of 71 million (July 2007), is the most populous country in the Middle East. Modern Turkey is a new creation, arising out of the Anatolian remnants of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. 1. 1453–1918 Constantinople, the one-time capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was conquered in 1453 by Turks, who renamed it Istanbul. It became the capital of the Ottoman Empire, which at its peak was one of the largest empires in the world. From the 17th century, decline came about for internal and external r…
Turkmenistan
(1,014 words)
1. General Situation Turkmenistan, in west-central Asia, borders the Caspian Sea to the west. Its neighbors are Kazakhstan (northwest), Uzbekistan (north and northeast), Afghanistan (southeast), and Iran (south). The Kara-Kum (Garagum) Desert, covering 80 percent of the country, extends from the Caspian to the
Amu Darʾya (ancient Oxus) River in the east. Dunes rise to the Kopet-Dag Mountains in the south; the eastern part of the country is plateau. Only 4.5 percent of the land is arable. Turkmenistan is an important supplier of natural ga…