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[German Version] The term universals refers to general concepts (see also General/Particular) or predicates. They can be defined purely formally by saying that they are subsentential expressions that leave the pragmatic content of an expression unaltered if a substitution of the corresponding expression can take place asymmetrically (Brandon, 527) and therefore constitute a sentence frame. Unfortunately a substantial definition is impossible without addressing the question of the reality status of u…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion The importance of the insight that the concept of relationality represents an essential factor in understanding reality (along with its origins and purpose) has only recently been fully recognized, although intellectual history may be seen as a quest for this insight. This is illustrated by the fact that Western philosophy can be divided into a Heraclitean type (Heraclitus), which emphasizes the priority of the Many, and a Parmenidian type (Parmenides, Being)…

[German Version] in religions – that which lies before ( pro) the temple ( fanum) – is the opposite of sacredness. It refers to places and times that, in contrast to sacred places, are not distinguished by the presence of the divine. In Christianity the difference between sacred and profane is transcended, for the whole of creation is good (Gen 1). God can be present everywhere and, through Jesus, the Son of God, sacred designations can be relativized to the benefit of his creatures (Mark 2:27 etc.). The dist…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology I. Philosophy 1. Formal logic While signs are determined within the context of a signifying act (semiosis) by their relationship to the sign-users (pragmatic dimension), to the signified (semantic dimension), and to other signs (syntactic dimension) (Semiotics), logic in the broader sense concerns itself with this syntactic relationship of ¶ the signs and sign sequences to one another as well as with the semantic relationship of signs and sign sequences to the structures of subject areas, so that logic m…

[German Version] Economic Trinity refers to the relationship of the triune God to the world in salvation history with respect to creation, atonement, and perfection, as already formulated by Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertullian. Immanent Trinity designates the mutual relationship of the three consubstantial hypostases or persons (IV): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; it is initially described, for instance in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, as the relationship established by the birth (γέννησις/ génnēsis) of the Son from the Father and by the emanation (ἐκπόρευσις/ ekpóreusis) of…

[German Version] (Feb 27, 1880, Hannover – Jul 16, 1945, Zürich), professor of philosophy and pedagogy (1931) in Zürich, who was occupied with “critical philosophy,” a combination of epistemology and ethics: in the conceptual-methodical activity within philosophical systems, science and culture, sought-after “truth” and knowledge are a projection of the interpreting subject, or the “inner,” based on the efforts of the egoity to cope with the world. They basically fall short of “reality” as a trans…

[German Version] For Luther the problem of praedicatio identica was a central issue in understanding the Eucharist (III, 1.a). A praedicatio identica de diversis naturis would mean that two different essential predicates not linked by implication (Logic), such as “bread” and “body of Christ,” would be predicated of the same thing, so that both would be the same and there would be an identity of bread and body. This praedicatio identica appears to be suggested by the words “This is my body” accompanying the display of the bread, but that would be incorrect. On the one hand, the word this, as i…

[German Version] (also called generationism) in the broad sense is the doctrine that not only the body but also the soul of a particular individual is created through the procreation of his or her parents. It includes dimanatistic traducianism, in which the soul of the begetting father is the efficient cause generating the soul of the begotten child, and emanatistic traducianism or traducianism in the narrow sense, in which the begetting soul is the root ( tradux) of the begotten soul, which it passes on through a seed. Traducianism contrasts with (a) Origenist pre-exis…

[German Version] Fiducia, or trust, is the basic Protestant designation referring to justifying faith. Luther generally speaks of faith that seizes Christ ( fides apprehensiva Christi, WA 39, 1. 45) but also makes references to fiducia, here understood as the substance of the human heart, as trust in the God who promises us compassion (WA 59, 722). This designation of faith as trust in the promised mercy for Christ's sake is found everywhere in Melanchthon's writings (CR 21, 422), who emphasizes that fiducia as oriented toward the capacity of volition ( notitia) implies historical con…

[German Version] Tritheism, a polemical term used like polytheism (Monotheism and polytheism) to stigmatize certain historical doctrines of the Trinity (Trinity/Doctrine of the Trinity), which cannot be categorized under a single heading. At the third Council of Byzantium in 680/681 (Constantinople: IV, 3), for example, the charge was lodged against John Philoponus, who interpreted the relationship between person and substance on the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian model of form and matter. In the Middle A…

[German Version] Immanentism in the wider sense is employed as an external designation of conceptions of reality that deny any reference to transcendency. Immanentism in the strict sense is classified by the Catholic Church (encyclicals Pascendi dominici gregis [1907] and Humani generis [1950]) as one of the objectionable forms of modernism alongside pragmatism, idealism, and existentialism (philosophy), and refers to efforts, undertaken under the influence of M. Blondel's philosophy, to anchor revelation (like any form of being) in the consciousness. Markus Mühling Bibliogra…

[German Version] In medieval theology, “fides” is an overriding term under which various phenomena to which different degrees of salvific relevance are attributed are delimited by means of various distinctions. For example, the Summa Halensis (Alexander of Hales) makes a double distinction, distinguishing between, on the one hand, faith acquired through hearing scripture or through reason ( fides acquisita) and, on the other, infused faith ( fides infusa). The latter can then be further subdivided into faith without works ( fides informis) and faith with works ( fides caritate for…

[German Version] The expression “implicit faith” is used in a twofold fashion. (a) That which is implicit can be capable of explication. Theology, for example, is the scholarly explication of what are largely the implicit presuppositions of the worldview of the Christian understanding of reality as embedded in differing life contexts. The early Protestant distinction between, on the one hand, the articuli fidei fundamentales that are directly necessary for salvation and, on the other, articuli fidei non fundamentales can be explicated by means of the schema explicit-impl…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Dogmatics I. Church History The 1828 programmatic announcement of the journal Theologische Studien und Kritiken ( ThStKr) in 1828 by G. Lücke in cooperation with K. Ullmann, F.W.K. Umbreit, J.K.L. Gieseler, and K.I. Nitzsch used the term Vermittlung, “mediation.” The theologico-political controversies of the Vormärz period coined mediation theology as a polemical term to attack this school of theology, which followed in the footsteps of F.D.E. Schleiermacher but clearly went back to Melanchthon. The linkage…

[German Version] I. Natural Sciences – II. Philosophy of Religion I. Natural Sciences A model (from Lat. modulus, “measure,” “standard”) is commonly understood to represent something other than itself. An analogy is expected between the model and that which it models. It is often assumed that a model emphasizes certain important features of that which it represents. This general conception is realized in various ways within the natural sciences. “Model” frequently designates two or three-dimensional illustrati…

[German Version] I. Church History 1. General. The term Neo-Lutheranism refers to the 19th-century theological and ecclesiological movement that sought to turn its back on the Enlightenment and rationalism and to renew Lutheranism (Lutherans) on the basis of strict fidelity to Scripture and the Lutheran confessions. Although the term, coined (as Ger. Neuluthertum) by K. Schwarz ( Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, 1856, 353), was intended to emphasize the difference between a Neo-Lutheranism and old Lutheranism ( Altluthertum), it soon came to designate those who wan…

[German Version] I. Philosophy A value judgment is a judgment by which something is assessed as valuable or valueless. In contrast to the judgment of fact, which constitutes a descriptive statement of facts with a claim to scientifically verifiable objectivity, the value judgment in the sense of a normative (prescriptive) assessment constitutes the act of recognizing or revocating a validity, mostly in practical respects (also indirectly). Where it is not directly meant to guide actions, it contains…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion and Fundamental Theology I. Philosophy A statement that is simply incredible is described in philosophy and logic as a paradox, if, in spite of its “unbelievability,” it seems nevertheless to be correctly deduced from acceptable premises. An example of this kind is the Socratic paradox stating that action against better knowledge is impossible (cf. Plato Prot. 351b–358e). From the prima facie plausible pragmatic theory assumption: (1) “People always freely do what seems best (for them),” the statement se…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. New Testament and Early Christianity – III. Systematic Theology I. Religious Studies In religious studies, the concept of “charisma” refers especially to religious phenomena which exhibit characteristics such as originality, immediacy, spontaneity, and dynamics, and which stand in sharp contrast or even in outright opposition to the ordinary. From an ideal-typological perspective, these phenomena thus entail a potential disruption of tradit…

[German Version] I. Natural Sciences – II. Philosophy – III. Fundamental Theology – IV. Ethics I. Natural Sciences In the natural sciences, the term paradigm (from Gk παράδειγμα/ parádeigma, “pattern, model”) is commonly used to refer to exemplary models for scientific work. A particular way of setting up an experiment or a simulation, or a strategy for giving evidence for a conclusion, can be described as a paradigm. On a more general level, influential basic theories or scientific works introducing such theories (e.g. Jo…