I. History of Religion

In one of the earliest usages in the German language, materialism was described as an “error,” i.e. “when a person denies the spiritual substance and refuses to recognize any other than the physical” (J.G. Walch, Philosophisches Lexikon, 1726, quoted from HWP V, 1980, 842). This negative characterization is the result of the philosophical and theological belief in the existence of spiritu…