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[German Version] The heightened sensitivity to ecological issues in the last decades of the 20th century led to the broad acceptance of the earlier expressed feeling (cf. A. Schweitzer's “reverence for life”) that not just human beings but all living things are endowed with dignity and, accordingly, that the human being (as a recipient of dignity) should respect his own dignity as a living being by recognizing and appropriately respecting the dignity of …

[German Version] I. History of Science – II. Dogmatics – III. Ethics I. History of Science A fundamentally new understanding of human beings and nature from the end of the 16th century prepared the way for evolutionary thinking. In the new paradigm, which is regarded as one of the greatest scientific revolutions, a world without a final cause and which developed and changed ad infinitum was presumed. Since C.R. Darwin, the mechanism of evolution has been described as variation and natural selecti…

[German Version] I. Bible – II. Systematic Theology I. Bible 1. The deeds-and-consequences link is the idea, found especially in the Old Testament and in ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, but also in the New Testament, of a correspondence between (good/evil) action and the consequences for the doer. What is controversial is the manner in which deeds and consequences take …

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Ethics I. Philosophy The term ideal derives from Lat. idealis, idealiter, first used by Martianus Capella ( ad ideam pertinens); from the 13th century on, it was used in two senses: (1) as existing in the Platonic “idea” or “archetypally” in the divine spirit ( esse exemplariter), and (2) as existing only as a model in the mind ( esse in intellectu). Systematically, the ideal lies between the poles of ideas and empirical reality. The ideal differs from the universality of ideas inasmuch as it individualizes an idea in a sin…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology – III. Social Ethics The expression (Gk ἀδιάφορα semantic equivalents: intermediates, Gk μέση, mesē-, that which is permitted) designates phenomena of human life that are neither positive (good, bonum) nor negative (evil, malum) in the ethical realm (i.e. with regard to the attainment of human destiny). In the strict sense, then, adiaphora occur only in ethical systems whose guiding understanding of humani…

[German Version] At the first plenary assembly of the World Council of Churches (Amsterdam, 1948), J.H. Oldham put forward the concept of a “responsible society” as a concrete goal to guide the churches' socioethical involvement in response to the social conditions of the day. He called this the “middle axiom.” The expression became common currency, in the sense of a “medium-range (socioethical) maxim: (II).” Eilert Herms Bibliography J.H. Oldham, “A Responsible Society,” in: The Church and the Disorder of Scoiety, publ. World Council of Churches, 1948, 120–154.

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Social Sciences – III. Theology I. Religious Studies If an institution is understood as a set of norms that regulate action in a precise manner, then, from the perspective of religious studies, a differentiation can be made between institutions that regulate religious action and normative standards that regulate non-religious action but are religiously justified. However, it always needs to be taken into consideration that this distinction is made by the external …

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics I. Dogmatics From a Protestant perspective, obligation (in the sense of binding authority) is assigned only to the Word of God (VI), the self-revealing power of which can lead to deeper insights and to “new Decalogues” (Luther); the latter must be examined by the church as a community with strict reference to the canon. The articles of faith assert binding authority insofar as they are based on Scripture as “the only rule and guiding principle” (BSLK 767, 15), and, at a further remove, insofar as agreement is rea…

[German Version] I. Concept 1. The origin of the Latin word persona (“mask, role, status”) is unknown; it may be Etruscan. The philologist Gavius Bassus (1st cent. bce) traced the “origin” of the word to the function of the ancient theater mask, namely that of a megaphone which concentrated the voice and caused it to “sound through” ( per-sonare; cf. Gellius, Noctes Atticae V 7) in a more sonorous way. The corresponding Greek word is πρόσωπον/ prósōpon, “face, mask, front.” The word “persona” is employed in grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and philosophy. What the mode…

[German Version] I. Ethics – II. Education – III. Practical Theology I. Ethics With regard to processes in general, “achievement” refers to their efficacy. Ethics, however, speaks of achievement only with regard to actions (Action) – and not actions in general, but only actions that are ethically justified. This is possible only when two conditions are met. First: It must be possible …

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics I. Dogmatics The revelation (V) of Christ discloses to faith that the meaning and truth of Jesus' life for human life in the present is creation in the process of realizing its goal, the consummation of God's kingdom. At the same time, it discloses the mystery of Jesus' person as the incarnate Logos of the Creator and thus the true nature of his work, grounded in the Creator's eternal will for ¶ communion, reconciliation, and consummation (Dogmatics: II): the work of creation that provides human life in the present. Its purpose …

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Ethics I. Philosophy The term originated in the expression propositio maxima, the designation of the major premise in a syllogism. It can denote an axiom or a practical principle. It attained relevance in I. Kant's moral philosophy. Kant describes any subjective motivation to initiate an action as a maxim, in contrast to the objectively valid, general law (Law and legislation). The categorical imperative requires that only those maxims be allowed which can also count as laws ( Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademieausgabe, vol. IV, 4…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Social norms are the interiorized but controlled rules of conduct of a social group. They include rules and standards for decency and mores, that is, for religious, moral, and right behavior. Unlike ideals or values, norms are mostly specific and concrete. There are various theories of the meaning of norms; most widely accepted is the thesis that norms serve the development of social controls and group solidarity or cultural identity. Validity is generally claimed for religious and moral norms by appeal to a religious authority (go…

[German Version] I. Terminology and Theory In its scientific exploration of the past, all historiography aims at a synthesis in the sense of a valid overview of what has gone before. At best, however, the quest can succeed only paradigmatically and typically, because any reconstruction of an histoire totale is doomed to failure. Nevertheless historiography cannot abandon the ven-¶ ture of viewing history (History/Concepts of history) as a whole, because otherwise the incalculable mass of detail would rule out any interpretation of historical processes. …

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Dogmatics – III. Ethics I. Philosophy A good is something we actively pursue for ourselves (Action: I). Obviously there are different kinds of goods that we pursue: prosperity, health, development of our talents, friendship, professional success, the joy of love, long life, etc. Classically (Plato, Laws 697b, 743e) ¶ goods can be divided into three classes: external goods, goods of the body, such as health, and goods of the soul, such as friendship and justice. Our appetite for goods inevitably leads to confli…

[German Version] The assessment of goods or benefits is often the last step in the formation of ethical judgments, as when the choice of a course of conduct cannot be derived from a general or specific directive for action. It is necessary when one of the available courses of action is not clearly preferable to others, whether because several appear equally preferable, a temporal sequencing of the goods to be achieved by them is impossible, so that other goods (Good) must be abandoned in favor of …

[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] I. History of Religion – II. Bible – III. Dogmatics – IV. Philosophy – V. Philosophy of Religion – VI. Ethics – VII. Practical Theology – VIII. Judaism I. History of Religion The concept of love describes a relationship of affection, tenderness, or devotion between human beings and between humans and God (Love of/for God) or the gods. The Old Testament speaks of the love of God for humanity; in Judaism, the commandment of obedience to God is followed by the commandment to love God (Deut 6:5) and one's fe…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Systems theory considers religion one social system alongside others, like the economy, law (Law and Jurisprudence), politics, and education and analyzes it in terms of the function it discharges. The evolutionary approach of systems theory assumes that in primordial local communities the function of religion was nonspecific and was fulfilled in combination with other functions – military, economic, and familial. The transition to modern societies witnessed a dif…

[German Version] I. Philosophy Natural law is the essence of the legal norms that claim to be binding on all human beings, independent of positive laws and conventions. The term goes back to the distinction between nature( phýsis) and law ( nómos; Law/Natural law), put forward by the Sophists of the 5th century bce in order to challenge the traditional positive laws. According to Antiphon, the precepts of such laws are arbitrary, whereas the precepts of nature, which articulate individual benefit, are necessary (DK, frgm. B 44). Plato presents a v…

[German Version] I. Medicine Reproductive medicine encompasses research into female and male sterility and its treatment. The importance of reproductive medicine has greatly increased in recent years owing to the introduction of new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. It has long been known that various morphological changes (e.g. malformations of the uterus, occlusions of the Fallopian tubes and seminal ducts) lead to male and female sterility. One possible therapy is attempted correction of the…

[German Version] I. Philosophy Traditional epistemology considers reason primarily to be a discursive faculty (Gk διάνοια/ diánoia; λόγος/¶ lógos; Lat. ratio), in part to distinguish it from intellect as an intuitive faculty (Capacity). This distinction also implies a ranking: the discursive faculty either proceeds syllogistically as “demonstration” (ἀπόδειξις/ apódeixis) based on ultimate principles that cannot themselves be deduced by reasoning (Arist. Eth. Nic. 1139b) or else leads to them, roughly in the sense of movement from the presuppositions made…

[German Version] I. The Concept 1. History. As a sign of modern reflection on religion from an anthropo-philosophical perspective, we may take the emergence of philosophical anthropology (Human beings) c. 1600 (Odo Marquard) and the philosophy of religion c. 1770. However these two disciplines are defined – whether as (sub)disciplines of philosophy or simply as philosophy –, they are related to the problems raised by the various positions taken in modern debates over (Christian) religious belief (Faith…

[German Version] Generally, the term sport can be understood to cover all manifestations of regulated, agonal, motor interaction that qualify as ludic (Play) and as such subserve corporeal self-awareness (prowess, body control, achievement [II; Contest], pleasure) and corporeal expression of the participants’ sense of self. Such phenomena have been present in all ages and all cultures, though with varying public impact. In pre-Christian antiquity, sport played a major public role (the classical Olympic Games from 776 bce to 393 ce [Olympia]), which shrank as Christianity b…

[German Version] In the culture of ethical argumentation, every inference of an “ought”-statement from an “is”-statement is today still largely rejected as a “naturalistic fallacy.” The prevailing standpoint is that the contents of all imperatives (universal, general, or pertaining to individual cases) can only be inferred from sets of premises, the maior of which is in turn an “ought”-statement. Consequently, contents of imperatives (Norms) and ¶ binding goals of action can no longer be justified in reference to natural law (to the nature of the object), but …

[German Version] 1. Albrecht (Mar 25, 1822, Stettin – Mar 20, 1889, Göttingen). After studies in Bonn (1839–1841 under K.I. Nitzsch), Halle (1841–1843 under F.A.G. Tholuck, Julius Müller, J.E. Erdmann, and K. Schwarz), Ritschl gained his doctorate in Halle ( Expositio doctrinae Augustini de creatione mundi, peccato, gratia, 1843). He took his first examination in 1844, continued his studies in Heidelberg (1845 under R. Rothe) and Tübingen (1845/1846 under F.C. Baur, E. Zeller, A. Schwegler, and F.T. Vischer), gained his Habilitation in Bonn (1846; diss. on Marcion and the o…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Ancient Near East and Israel – III. Judaism – IV. Greece and Rome – V. New Testament – VI. Church History – VII. Dogmatics – VIII. Ethics – IX. Philosophy I. Religious Studies History is a major aspect of the study of religion. Apart from its roots in the Enlightenment idea of tolerance, it owes its scholarly development to the historicism of the 19th century. As a result, the expression history of religions ( Religionsgeschichte, histoire des religions, storia delle religioni) has remained dominant in continental Europe, in con…

[German Version] (Jun 14, 1888, Benwitsch – Jul 17, 1972, Göttingen). After childhood and youth in a Berlin parsonage, Hirsch studied Protestant theology in Berlin (1906–1910; encounter with K. Holl, whom Hirsch acknowledged as his teacher; friendship with P. Tillich). He passed the first theological examination in 1911 and became a tutor, 1912–1915 inspector at the Theologische Stift of the University of Göttingen (friendship with P. Althaus), Habilitation in church history in Bonn (1915) and ass…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Fundamental Theology – III. Ethics I. Philosophy of Religion Coherence is essentially a syntactic relation that exists between various propositions, but not between propositions and reality. This relation is typically defined as an absence of contradictions between various propositions. More appropriate, however, is another definition of coherence as the logically and conceptually consistent integrability of certain propositions into a more comprehensive system of propositions. In a coherence theory of truth, truth is u…

[German Version] (May 8, 1899, Vienna – Mar 23, 1992, Freiburg i.Br.), studied law and economics in Vienna, was director of the Östereichisches Institut für Konjunkturforschung (Austrian Institute for Economic Research) (1927–1931), held professorships in the London School of Economics (1931–1950), Chicago (1950–1962), Freiburg im Breisgau (1962–1968), and received the Nobel Memorial Prize from the Bank of Sweden in 1974. Beginning with studies on monetary and economic cyle theory, Hayek turned in ¶ the 1940s to the study of the theoretical, socio-philosophical and a…

[German Version] Any understanding of “good” and “goods” is determined by an understanding of the highest good. 1 The so-called “good” is that which, as the perfection of the present, is experienced as attractive and thus as something to strive for (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1094 a3, 1172b; Thomas Aquinas, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria, 1926, Liber IV, n. 317). Every present-action context defines the good in three configurations: (a) as a determination of the present-action context that has become world-immanent (the realized bonum); (b) as still outstanding possibiliti…

[German Version] is the theory (the epitome of statements) of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the (given) presence of distinctions. We need a criteriology to carry out our praxis of distinction deliberately and responsibly – both for appropriate apprehension of distinctions already made (either through our own praxis or through processes for which we are not responsible), in other words, for our actions that construct symbols, and for our own appropri…

[German Version] For persons standing on the ground of the (externally or personally chosen) realized situation of their own personhood, in their pragmatic present, there are still determinations of their own being to be made, and in each case they must make a choice. It is always a matter of effective physical behaviors (Action), in accordance with physical and social rules of effectivity. Options are those selectable behaviors of which the function is known, and the effect foreseeable. They can …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Cosmos a. There are various ways of expressing the concept of the “world” in Greek and Latin: as the world as a whole, with the bipolar hendiadys heaven and earth (e.g. Diodorus Siculus I 7.7); as the world of human beings, with Greek οἰκουμένη/ oikouménē (sc. γῆ/ gḗ, “earth”; e.g. Diodorus Siculus I 1.3; cf. Lat. orbis terrarum, “circle of the earth”; genus humanum, “human world”); with emphasis on the world’s order, beauty, and completeness, with κόσμος/ kósmos (Cosmology) and universum or πᾶν/ pán, ὅλον/ hólon; or with emphasis on its self-a…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Dogmatics – III. Ethics I. Philosophy of Religion In philosophy of religion, the divine bonitas is considered from a metaphysical, a theological, and a moral perspective. In its metaphysical sense “goodness” is a transcendental term, i.e. a concept that transcends every ontological category. As such, goodness is co-extensive with existence: to exist is a good in itself. However, not everything that exists has being and goodness in the same degree. The quality of goo…