Religion Past and Present
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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
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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
Love of/for God
(5,381 words)
[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Christianity – IV. Judaism – V. Islam
I. Old Testament
1. God's love The notion of YHWH's love (in Heb. primarily derivatives of the root אהב/
ʾhb) for his people first appears in the book of the prophet Hosea, where God's love is cited as the “ground of divine election” (Jenni) in response to challenges to the election (I) of Israel by God (Hos 1:9). Hosea uses the image of a father's love (11:1; cf. also 11:4); despite his son's disobedience, he cannot give him up …
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Religion Past and Present
Love of One's Neighbor
(2,576 words)
[German Version] I. Meaning – II. Old Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Ethics
I. Meaning Love of one's neighbor is the love of creaturely persons, for other concrete creaturely persons (“neighbors”) as being in the image of God; it includes love of enemies (Matt 5:44 = Luke 6:27; Enemy,). The Reformers believed that the twofold law of love (Mark 12:29–31 parr.), expressive of a well-ordered creation, embodies all the demands of the law (cf. Luther, BSLK 586). The love…
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Religion Past and Present
Low Church
(387 words)
[German Version] Low Church is the name given to a party within the Church of England, which, after he Reformation, accepted the right of the state to control its worship and its doctrine. This position was almost universal in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and after the revolution of 1688 it became closely identified with the legal establishment of the church. In the 19th century, the term “low church” became associated with the movement to resist Anglo-Catholicism and its ritualistic te…
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Religion Past and Present
Löwenich, Walther von
(194 words)
[German Version] (Mar 3, 1903, Nuremberg – Jan 3, 1992, Erlangen), was professor of church history, history of dogma, confessional studies, and Christian art in Erlangen (1946–1971), rector of the university there (1956/1957), and president of the Lutheran Society (1964/1965). Löwenich rejected the absolutization of dogmatic statements and their equation with divine truth. He became known primarily as an important Luther scholar who combined his pioneering historical studies of Luther's theology w…
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Religion Past and Present
Löwith, Karl
(232 words)
[German Version] (Jan 9, 1897, Munich – May 24, 1973, Heidelberg), German philosopher. Löwith studied in Munich and Freiburg, earned his doctorate in Munich and his habilitation under M. Heidegger, in Marburg with his thesis “Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen. Ein Beitrag zur anthropologischen Grundlegung der ethischen Probleme” [The individual in the role of fellow human being: a contribution to the anthropological foundation of the ethical problem]. In 1933, Löwith emigrated to Italy, …
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Religion Past and Present
Löw, Leopold
(170 words)
[German Version] (May 22, 1811, Čzerná Hora, Moravia [today Poland] – Oct 13, 1875, Szeged, Hungary). As a scholar and rabbi – 1840 in Nagykanizsa, 1846 in Papa, and from 1850 in Szeged – Löw was one of the leading figures of the Hungarian Jewish Reform movement (Reform Judaism). He energetically promoted the emancipation of the Hungarian Jews and, against Orthodox opposition, a cautious reinterpretation of Judaism in the context of the rabbinic tradition. As a military chaplain during the Hungari…
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Religion Past and Present
Lowth, Robert
(212 words)
[German Version] (Nov 27, 1710, Winchester, England – Nov 3, 1787, London), Anglican theologian and the bishop of Oxford (from 1766) and London (from 1777). As professor of literature in Oxford (1741–1750), Lowth gave lectures in which he introduced the Old Testament into the contemporary debate concerning poetic language and the sublime. Through this hermeneutical decision, he was able to take a biblically based position in the controversy concerning Deism, and open up a new literary-critical approach to the OT. His lectures
De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (1753; Eng. 1787), a pamphl…
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Religion Past and Present
Luba
(1,691 words)
[German Version] The name “Luba” (pl.
baluba, sing.
muluba in the spoken language) denotes a group of Bantu-speaking peoples, numbering well over 5,000,000, in the southern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo,. Roughly speaking, they fall into a northern and a southern group. The northern group comprises the Kasai Luba in the west, the Songye Luba and Hemba Luba in the east; the southern group comprises the Katanga Luba, associated with the early Luba empire, and sometimes the Hemba Luba in the e…
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Religion Past and Present
Lubac, Henri de
(652 words)
[German Version] Lubac, Henri de, (Feb 20, 1896, Cambrai, France – Sep 4, 1991, Paris), a French Jesuit theologian, became cardinal in 1983. Lubac was one of the principal renewers of Catholic theology in the light of biblical and patristic sources and exerted decisive influence on Vatican II. After taking part in World War I and finishing his studies, according to the Jesuit curriculum, in Jersey, Ore Place (intensive preoccupation with M. Blondel,'s philosophy), and Lyon, he was appointed lectur…
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Religion Past and Present
Lubavich, Hasidic Movement
(285 words)
[German Version] Lubavich is a small town in Russia, near Smolensk, which became the common designation of the Hasidic movement (Hasidism), ¶ Habad, founded at the end of the 18th century. Seven generations of the Schneursohn family were the spiritual leaders of the people of Lubavich. Rabbi Shneur Salman von Liadi is still today revered as the founder and leader of Habad Hasidism. After his death his disciples elected his son, Rabbi Dov Baer (1773–1827) to lead them. Baer's son, M.M. Schneerson, became known by his …
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Religion Past and Present
Lubbertus, Sibrandus
(160 words)
[German Version] (c. 1555 Langwarden, Butjadingen, Lower Saxony – Jan 10, 1625, Franeker, The Netherlands). After studying at Wittenberg, Geneva, Marburg, and Neustadt an der Haardt and a brief ministry in Emden from 1582 to 1584, Lubbertus was appointed the first professor of theology at the newly founded university of Franeker. After receiving his Dr.theol. from Heidelberg in 1587, he wrote numerous works to secure the heritage of the Reformation against the Socinians (
De Jesu Christo servatore, 1611), the Remonstrants (Arminians), and especially Catholic theologians …
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Religion Past and Present
Lübeck, Bishopric
(857 words)
[German Version] Lübeck's origins go back to the German colonization and Christianization of Slavic Vagria/East Holstein under Henry the Lion, after the failed establishment of the bishopric of Oldenburg c. 972–983 and the destruction of the seat of the Slavic principality at Liubice (Old Lübeck). The German commercial town was founded in 1159 and the bishopric was moved there in 1160; a cathedral, several monasteries, and four parish churches were erected between 1163 and 1229. The small episcopa…
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Religion Past and Present
Lübeck, Vincent
(153 words)
[German Version] (c. 1654, Padingbüttel, Cuxhaven, Germany – Feb 9, 1740, Hamburg, Germany), German composer, organist, and teacher. Lübeck studied with Caspar Förckelrath and perhaps Andreas Kneller. He was organist of St. Cosmae and Damiani, Stade, from 1674 until 1702. His brilliant reputation won him the post of organist at the Nikolaikirche, Hamburg, which he held until his death. His nine extant organ works are characterized by brilliant virtuosity and thematic unity, and demonstrate the com…
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Religion Past and Present
Lucaris, Cyril
(372 words)
[German Version] (baptismal name, Constantinos; Nov 13, 1570, Herakleion, Crete – Jun 29, 1638, near Constantinople) was patriarch of Constantinople for five terms in office (brought about by depositions and reinstallations) between 1620 and 1638. He was a theologian open to Calvinism and controversial in Orthodoxy, and a martyr (strangled by a band of Janissaries). As the scion of a respected family of priests, he first worked, after studying in Venice and Padua, with his uncle Meletius Pegas, wh…
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Religion Past and Present
Lucas of Prague
(80 words)
[German Version] (c. 1460, Prague – Dec 11, 1528, Jungbunzlau, Bohemia) was the most important theologian and leader of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. After 1494, he contributed definitively to the reconfiguration and consolidation of their theology and polity (“Grand Party”). In the last years of his life, he made initial (critical) contacts with Luther and Melanchthon. Peter Hilsch Bibliography A. Molnár,
Bratr Lukáš, 1948 E. Peschke,
Kirche und Welt in der Theologie der Böhmischen Brüder, 1981.
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Religion Past and Present
Lucian of Antioch (Saint)
(318 words)
[German Version] Lucian of Antioch (Saint), an Antiochene presbyter and a controversial figure in church history research. The only reliable data concerning his life are that he suffered martyrdom on Jan 7(?), 312 in Nicomedia and authored a number of
Libelli de fide and letters. Considering this paucity of information, it seems quite remarkable that history has linked Lucian to very different theological movements and trends. He is thus regarded, for instance, – via Paul of Samosata – as the father of Arianism (Arius/Arianism; A. v. Har-¶ nack), as the founder of the Antiochene s…
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Religion Past and Present
Lucian of Samosata
(372 words)
[German Version] (c. 120 ce, Samosata on the Euphrates – after 180, Egypt [?]) was a prominent author of the Second Sophistic School. Not a Greek by birth, he acquired an extensive knowledge of the Greek language and of Greek rhetoric, literature, and art through his studies and travels. Journeys as a rhetorician and longer sojourns in Ionia, Greece, Italy, Gaul, and Egypt allowed him to gather a wide variety of impressions relating to social life. He drew the topics and genres of his rich literary …
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Religion Past and Present
Lucia, Saint
(142 words)
[German Version] According to the legendary
Passio (c. 500), as a virgin consecrated to Christ she was put to death by the sword, after much torture, in Syracuse during the Diocletian persecution (Persecutions of Christians: I). Her supposed relics came to Metz in 970, whence her cult expanded (feast day Dec 13). The Lucia catacomb and the grave inscription of Euskia, signs of early cultic veneration, were discovered in Syracuse at the end of the 19th century. The figure of Lucia found its way into poetry, popular song, and popular piety. Klaus Unterburger Bibliography Sources:
Martyrolog…
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Religion Past and Present
Lucifer of Cagliari
(281 words)
[German Version] (died 370), who became bishop of Calaris (Cagliari) on Sardinia c. 350, was exiled under Emperor Constantius II at the 355 Synod of Milan because he refused to agree to the deposition of Athanasius. Amnestied in 362 under Julian the Apostate, Lucifer contributed substantially during his return journey to Calaris to the prolongation of the Antiochene Schism by independently consecrating the presbyterPaulinus as Eustathian bishop of Antioch (Eustathius of Antioch). Back in his episc…
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Religion Past and Present