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[German Version] I. Concept – II. Antiquity – III. New Testament – IV. Early Church – V. Systematic Theology I. Concept The notion of a “real person” residing within the outer human being is widely attested in ancient literature and became part of a comprehensive system of metaphors by the time of Hellenism at the latest. However, this notion is conveyed through very different terms, corresponding also to conceptions of rather differing nature. The single English concept “inner person,” which cannot adequately …

[German Version] The modern term “neo-Niceanism” (Ger. Neunicaenismus), with its variants, is said to go back to F. Loofs. It denotes a specific Trinitarian position of the later 4th century (Arius) that was made normative in 381 at the Second Imperial Council of Constantinople (Constantinople, Council of: IV, 1) and in other confessional documents ( Symbolum Quicumque ). It belongs to the traditional corpus of teaching that shapes the identity of most Christian churches and faith communities. It is true that in the last 100 years the content of the expression “neo-Nicea…

[German Version] The use of water instead of wine in the Lord's Supper is attested esp. in the so-called NT Apocrypha ( Acts Pet. II 2; Acts Paul 7; Acts Thom. 120–21/152/158[?]), but it seems also to have been customary occasionally when wine was unavailable in the mainstream church ( Martyrdom of Pionius 3.1); Irenaeus ascribed a corresponding practice to Jewish Christians ( Haer. V 1.3); Clement of Alexandria to Encratites ( Paedagogus II 32.3–4; Stromata I 96.1); Epiphanius to Marcion ( Haer. 42.3.3); Theodoret to students of Tatian called ῾Υδροπαραστάται/ Hydroparastátai (Thdt. Hae…

[German Version] According to Eusebius ( Hist. eccl. IV 28, cf. also 21) Musanus wrote a lost, “very elegant” book against people who had gone over to the so-called Encratites. Both the author's date and his place remain unclear. Suggestions, among others, are (because of the statement of Eusebius) the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180), or on the basis of Eusebius, Chronicorum liber ad annum, 2220 the time of Septimius Severus (193–211), and the regions of Egypt or Asia Minor. Christoph Markschies Bibliography A. v. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis E…

[German Version] The Early Church's heresiologies employ this term (derived from Gk ἐγκράτεια/ enkráteia, “self-control,” “abstinence”) to describe a group of ascestics (Asceticism) and date their origins to the 2nd century. Irenaeus traces them back to Saturninus of Antioch and Marcion ( Haer. I 28.1); he, like Eusebius of Caesarea, names as founder the Syrian Tatian (Eus. Hist. eccl. IV 29.6). Typical ascetic positions are attributed to them, for example the renunciation of marriage and the consumption of …

[German Version] was one of the three founders of a 2nd-century prophetic movement in Asia Minor (Maximilla, Priscilla and Quintilla), which since the 4th century has been called Montanism after him. As his Phrygian name indicates, he apparently came from Asia Minor. Later heresiology (Heresy: II, 2) in authors of the 4th century transmits further but probably unhistorical details of his life. Thus he is said to have been originally a priest of Apollo ( Disputatio [in Heine, 123]) or Cybele (Jer. Ep. 41,4), and to have hanged himself. Epiphanius of Salamis records four prophe…

[German Version] (Mar 3, 1875, Düsseldorf – Jun 25, 1942, Locarno). After passing his Abitur in Wittenberg, Lietzmann went to Jena in 1893 to study classical philology and theology, but it was his studies at Bonn from 1894 to 1898 that enduringly influenced him. There his real academic mentor was H. Usener, a renowned scholar in classical philology and religious studies, from whom he acquired a love of philological detail, a particular concern for large-scale religio-historical relationships, and a great inte…

[German Version] I. Church History Pelagius was an ascetic and theological writer from Britain. Before 410 he taught in Rome, and in 411/412, following the capture of Rome by the Goths, went to Palestine after a short stay in North Africa. His teaching, according to which the possibility of sinlessness was an essential part of human nature, provoked the criticism of Augustine and Jerome. This teaching had its setting in the pastoral care of members of the Roman elite. Pelagius stated that when one re…

[German Version] I. New Testament – II. Church History – III. Dogmatics – IV. Liturgical History – V. Practical Theology – VI. Missiology I. New Testament 1. Background Sacred meals are common to all religions. Before examining them in the context of the NT, it is necessary first to inquire into their background in the OT and in Judaism, whereupon it becomes evident that sacrificial meals play no role in them. Only the dai…

[German Version] of Bēth Ukkāme (Paul the Black, Paulos Melanos; c. 500 Alexandria – 584 Constantinople). In 564 Jacob Baradaeus consecrated Archimandrite Paul, who had grown up in Alexandria, as the anti-Chalcedonian (Jacobite) patriarch of Antioch (Monophysites), a position he held until 577. His tenure was beset by serious church-political conflicts. A temporary flirtation of the patriarch with the creed of Chalcedon affirming the two natures of Christ (c. 571) was followed by an abrupt dissoci…

[German Version] I. Terminology Especially in ecumenical discussion (Ecumene), there is a widespread assumption that the expression apostolic succession denotes a primitive and clearly defined attribute of ecclesiastical office. However, the notion that the marks of the church (Notae ecclesiae) include an unbroken chain of office holders going back to the apostles and that each of these office holders was placed in office through the laying-on of hands of another legitimate office holder appeared on the scene rel…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Christianity – III. Philosophy – IV. Judaism – V. Islam I. Religious Studies Gnosis (Gk γνῶσις/ gnṓsis, “knowledge”) is a particular form of religious knowledge that brings salvation per se. It is not dependent on a particular object but has its value and its justification in itself. It is total knowledge, since it overcomes the dichotomy between subject and object – in fact every dichotomy –, because it is absolute knowledge of the absolute. From the point of view of the history o…

[German Version] The term Nestorianism can be used in two senses. First, it can designate the theology (and sometimes also the ecclesiastical organization) of today’s Holy Apostolic and Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, whose members are called Nestorians (or East Syrians or Chaldeans; Apostolic Church of the East) because in 484/486, in conscious departure from the Roman imperial church, they adopted the Christology of Nestorianism, which had been condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 (Nes…

[German Version] Among the early Gnostic (Gnosis: III, 2) followers of Simon Magus, Irenaeus of Lyon mentions Saturninus of Antioch ( Haer. I 24.1f.), who probably lived in the early 2nd century. Irenaeus claims he taught that the world and humankind were created by seven individual angels and that humans were created in the image of “the supreme power,” which also gave them the “spark of life.” The angels in turn, according to Saturninus, were creatures of the supreme unknown father; the “God of the Jews” was one o…

[German Version] Leontius of Jerusalem and other neo-Chalcedonians (Neo-Chalcedonism) use the Greek adjective ἐνυπόστατος/ enhypóstatos from Late Antiquity to describe their view that the dogma of the human and divine natures of Christ as articulated by the Council of Chalcedon (Christology) is not referring to independent hypostases or persons, and that instead each of the two natures exists “enhypostatically” in relation to the one person of Christ and to the one hypostasis of the Trinity in three hypostases (Leontius, Adversus Nestorianos II 13 [PG 86, 1561 …

[German Version] I. Life – II. Works – III. Theology (c. 185/186 Alexandria – c. 253/254) I. Life In reconstructing the life of Origen, we must rely on information given by his grandson and pupil Eusebius of Caesarea ( Hist. eccl. VI 1–39). The relevant portions of the Apology for Origen of Pamphilus of Caesarea (CPG 1, 1715) were not translated into Latin by Tyrannius Rufinus and have been lost with the Greek original, but certain statements by Jerome, Rufinus, and Photius of Constantinople (Bibl. Codex 118) may derive from that source. The detailed section in Epiphanius of Salamis ( Haer. 64…

[German Version] (also called the Church Order of Hippolytus). E. Schwartz (1910) and Richard Hugh Connolly (1916) discovered that a few Late Antique church orders could be treated stemmatically as editions or translations of a (lost) literary archetype. Both scholars theorized that it had the title (᾿Αποστολικὴ παράδοσις/ apostolikḗ parádosis, “Apostolic Tradition”) and had been written by Hippolytus. Today only a minority of scholars accept this double hypothesis. What has been confirmed is the hypothesis of a single archetype, probably in Greek, of these chur…

[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Law – III. Church History – IV. Philosophy of Religion – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Judaism – VIII. Islam I. Terminology Classical Antiquity lacked a term for free will, a concept first popularized by Christians in Late Antiquity. Aristotle discussed the problem in the context of asking in what sense actions lie “within us” (ἐϕ᾿ ἡμῖν/ ephʾ hēmín; Arist. Eth. Nic. III 1, 1110a, 1–3). The Stoics called the concept τὸ αὐτεξούσιον/ to autexoúsion (“self-control”; ¶ cf. Chrysippus [ SVF II, 975–990]), translated into Latin as liberum arbitriu…

[German Version] The earliest evidence for the veneration of a Christopher goes back to the year 452, when the honorific title Χριστόφορος/ Christóphoros (“Christ-bearer”) first came into use as a proper name ( ASS Nov. II/2, 396 no. 39). The Acts of Saint Christopher (BHG 309) date from the early 6th century. They apparently equate Christopher with Christianus, a dog-headed soldier saint from the Acts of Bartholomew, who was called Reprebos before his baptism and who came from the land of the cannibals. Early Byzantine iconography accordingly portrayed…

[German Version] I. Philosophy 1. General character.  The influence of Plato’s thought was unlike that of any other philosopher. With the Academy (I) (c. 385 bce), Plato was the first philosopher to found a school in the institutional sense and so establish a philosophical tradition. Moreover, his criticism of writing shows that he gave precedence to the oral transmission of his thought by his students over his Dialogues, which were mainly written to publicize the ¶ Academy. In this sense, Platonism in antiquity understood itself as the legitimate heir of Plato’s phil…