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1. Early Church Tendencies 1.1. Two Fundamental Convictions Two fundamental convictions concerning the nature of the church, which are of great significance for the later development of church government, become evident in the NT writings. 1.1.1. The church has its origin in God’s actions in Jesus Christ. It is ekklēsia, or the people of the end time chosen and sanctified by God, to whom belongs the sphere of the sacred. Because he alone exercises his dominion over the church through the Holy Spirit, the church does not stand at the disposal of any human control or power (1 Cor. 3:16–17). Th…

According to the traditional understanding, collegialism designates a theory advanced in justification of (Protestant) territorial church government (the last of such older theories after the territorial and episcopal systems). Unlike earlier theories, however, it includes both a sociological and a theological theory of the church and of church law. The basis is the view, derived from natural law and the Enlightenment, of the social nature of the church (as a collegium, as for S. Pufendorf and J. H. Boehmer). In the middle of the 18th century early collegialists (e.g., C. M. Pfaff…

[German Version] I. History Ever since classical antiquity, the theory of resistance and the right of resistance have been linked inseparably to the understanding of sovereignty and its limits in both civil society and the church. 1. In the Germanic tribal kingdom of Western, Central, and Northern Europe, three overlapping legal concepts legitimated a right of resistance: (1) the conviction that the ruler is not above the law but subject to the law (grounded in the tradition of the administration of justice by the community of all …

[German Version] (May 5, 1916, Wiesbaden – Aug 14, 1988, Erlangen), Protestant jurist. He served as an officer from the first days of the war. After 1945 he studied and completed his professional qualification, and then practiced as a lawyer for several years in state and church administration. In 1958 he gained his Habilitation. From 1960 until his retirement in 1984 he was full professor of public law and church law in Erlangen. Obermayer was one of the pioneers of administrative law founded on the rule of law, informed by basic rights and in co…

[German Version] 1. Johannes (Nov 24, 1889, Kammerstein, Middle Franconia – Dec 15, 1965, Tübingen), Protestant teacher of constitutional and church law. After service in the church in Munich and later in Berlin, he became a private lecturer in 1923, and supernumerary professor in Berlin in 1926; in 1928, he was a full professor of public law and church law in Bonn, and in Munich from 1934 (with an interruption), until his retirement in 1957. After his initial labors in the history of church law as …

[German Version] (July 9,1860, Essen – Nov 30, 1928, Erlangen), Protestant legal scholar. After associate professorships in Leipzig and Kiel, he was appointed to a full professorship in Erlangen in 1888. After numerous works on other legal topics, he devoted himself primarily to marriage law and church law, which he discussed without “any religious or theological consideration.” His monumental magnum opus, an edition of the Protestant church orders of the Reformation period (5 vols., 1902–1913; continued after 1951 by the Kirchenrechtliches Institut of t…

[German Version] The Prussian Civil Code ( Preußisches Allgemeines Landrecht) went into effect on Jun 1, 1794, as a law code for the unified Prussian monarchy. It was drafted at the behest of Frederick the Great by the new chancellor, Casimir v. Carmer (1780); among those contributing to its content, Carl Gottlieb Svarez and Ernst Ferdinand Klein stand out. Completed in 1791, after Frederick’s death, it was to have taken effect in 1792 as the Allgemeines Gesetzbuch für die Preußischen Staaten [Civil code for the Prussian states]. Not least in reaction to the French Revoluti…

[German Version] I. Practical Theology – II. Law I. Practical Theology Basing themselves on the Christian conception of the human being, church schools attempt to dispense and configurate school education in such a way that the power of the gospel as well as the significance of Christian faith and its understanding of life can become experienceable in the pedagogical interaction of a shared conduct of life. Their legitimation is thus both theological and pedagogical. In their …

[German Version] The expressions ius in sacra and ius circa sacra came into use in the 17th century but were not clearly distinguished until the 19th century. They denote the legal authority of the territorial ruler by virtue of his supervisory authority over all corporations and religious bodies (Secular supremacy: ius in sacra), grounded in his secular authority, and his authority as summepiscopus (Summepiscopate of the princes) of the Protestant church ( ius in sacris). Episcopalist theology (Episcopalism: I) developed a graduated theory of secular authority, in co…

[German Version] (Jan 27, 1701, Trier – Sep 2, 1790, Montquintin Castle, Luxemburg), Catholic historian and canonist. Hontheim was from a patrician family in Trier. He studied law, theology and classical philology in Trier, Leuven and Leiden. He received the Dr.iur.utr. in 1724 and became a priest and canonist in 1728, first in Trier then in Coblenz in 1740. He was professor of Roman law in Trier (1733–1738), administrator of the diocesan court in Coblenz (1738) and auxiliary bishop and pro-chancellor of the University in Trier (1748). Despite ecclesial and political success in th…

[German Version] Territorialism is a theory of the legal relationship between the state and the church, according to which the all-embracing sovereignty of the prince includes sovereignty over the church and the public practice of religion in his territory; this means that all leadership authority in the church derives from the territorial lord. Chronologically the territorial system gradually gave way to episcopalism (which was influenced increasingly by territorialist arguments as it emerged); i…

[German Version] refers to the division of the Reichstag according to religious parties ( Corpus Catholicorum and Corpus Evangelicorum ) when one side declared the question at issue to be a matter of religion. Deliberations then began first within the confessional blocks – separated according to curias. If these separately reached decisions differed from one another, only the path of compromise, the amicabilis compositio remained. Matters of religion could not, therefore, be decided in a plenary session according to the majority principle. Exercised de facto as early as 1526, b…

[German Version] I. Law In contrast with its imprecise meaning in general usage, which also includes social disparities, in law the term “privilege” has a more clearly defined meaning, which became increasingly precise in the course of history. It denotes a special right granted to an individual or majority group by sovereign act of a responsible authority. As a legal term it has its origin in Roman law; in the Middle Ages it was developed essentially by the church, but used also by the emperor. In…

[German Version] I. Law 1. “Broadcasting” has a wider, meaning in law than in everyday language. State broadcasting agreements typically define broadcasting as “the organization and distribution of presentations of any kind in word, sound, and image by the use of electrical oscillations . . .” (Ger. State Broadcasting Agreement, §2, para. 1 [June 7, 2002 ed.]). This covers not only radio and television (including Pay-TV), but also sound and moving picture services, screen texts etc. (the inclusion of…

[German Version] refers to the right under imperial law to emigrate for religious reasons. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) guaranteed the estates of the empire the ¶ ius reformandi , i.e. the authority to determine the confession of their territory (religious ban). Subjects of other confessions were granted as a legal benefit ( beneficium) a qualified right to emigrate (i.e. taking along family and belongings) to a territory of their confession – and, therewith, the first constitutionally guaranteed basic right. The Peace of Westphalia confirmed this…

[German Version] 1. History. The concept originated in the rational Enlightenment doctrine of natural law (IV), and especially in the state-church law theory of collegialism. “Religious societies” is thus a short formula for the outside view of the churches, and later of all religious confessional societies from the vantage point of the religiously neutral state, which no longer concerns itself with the issue of religious truth and is therefore committed in principle to equal treatment. It was in this form that the concept found its way via the Prussian Civil Code, the Paulskirchenverf…

[German Version] (Apr 23, 1893, Frankfurt am Main – Feb 22, 1976, Erlangen) was a Protestant historian of law, and lectured in state and canon law. After studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and Halle, and military service from 1914 to 1918, Liermann gained his Habilitation in Freiburg in 1926. Initially appointed associate professor in 1929, he held a chair in Erlangen from 1931 to 1961. In addition to numerous works on the history of law, Liermann exerted a formative influence particularly through his textbook on canon law of 1933. He summar…

[German Version] (religious name Philipp; Nov 7, 1744, Budenheim, near Mainz – Aug 20, 1808, Düsseldorf), theologian and canonist. Hedderich became a Minorite in 1759. From 1774 to 1794 he was professor of canon law in Bonn; from 1803 on he taught at the Rechtsakademie in Düsseldorf. While he was studying law at Trier, he was decisively influenced by the personality and work of J.N. v. Hontheim. As a canonist, he was one of the most influential theoreticians of Febronianism. Hedderich emphasized t…

[German Version] ( appel comme d’abus) is an appeal of civil authorities against an abuse of power by an ecclesiastical authority transgressing the boundaries drawn by civil law; it was thus (along with the placet) a particularly effective instrument of secular supremacy. It achieved its distinctive form in France in 1539, when it served primarily as a defense against encroachments on Gallican liberties (Gallicanism). The French model also inspired its use in Spain and the Netherlands. Initially legal title was vested in royal church advocacy (Church advocate). The recursus came in…

[German Version] (Aug 31, 1904, Wülfrath – Nov 29, 1976, Göttingen), teacher of constitutional and administrative law. After studying in Marburg, Berlin, and Bonn (doctorate under C. Schmitt), Weber entered the Prussian ministry of education and cultural affairs, initially in the religious division, later in the division for national culture. In addition he was appointed lecturer at the Berlin School of Commerce in 1931 and promoted ¶ to full professor in 1935. In 1942 he became a professor at Leipzig and in 1949 at Göttingen, where he served as rector from 195…

[German Version] ( ius exclusivae) denotes the right of a civil ruler or state in Catholic church law to exclude as undesirable a certain candidate from being elected or appointed to church office. Papal exclusion, which the sovereigns of major Catholic powers (German and – later – Austrian emperors, kings of France and Spain) claimed for themselves with no formal recognition by th…

[German Version] The term state religion denotes a religious element unifying the collectivity of subjects, considered indispensable for the existence of the state (“un roi, une loi, une foi”). It was taken for granted as the foundation of nearly every early form of the state. To the extent that religion is considered an element of public order, religious pluralism is perceived as a threat to the unity of the state, since it bears the seed of civil war, or at least qualified loyalty on the part of th…

[German Version] I. German Law Along with artistic freedom, Basic Law art. 5 § 3 guarantees freedom of “scholarship, research, and teaching.” The association of freedom of teaching with scholarship and research shows that the guarantee of the Basic Law applies only to scholarly teaching, i.e. teaching that presents the findings of one’s own research (and examines critically the findings of others). Freedom of teaching thus relates (albeit not exclusively) to teaching in public and private universitie…

[German Version] I. Catholic – II. Orthodox – III. Protestantism – IV. Judaism I. Catholic Excommunication must be defined as a privative term from communicatio and κοινωνíα/ koinōnía (cf. 1 Cor 10:16: sharing and participating in the body and blood of Jesus ¶ Christ; cf. 2 Cor 13:13: communion in the Holy Spirit). The word excommunication does not occur in the New Testament. The competence of the church to excommunicate is traced back to Matt 16:18f.…

[German Version] refers to modalities of the medieval and modern Catholic claim to ecclesial (and esp. papal) authority in temporal (worldly) matters ( in temporalibus). Invoking older doctrinal tra-¶ ditions, the medieval papacy in particular claimed papal supremacy over all secular powers (most strongly articulated in the Unam sanctam bull of Boniface VIII [1302], doctrine of the two swords), and thus not only the supreme legislative authority in spiritualibus et temporalibus but also a right to intervene directly in the legal order of states through the repeali…

[German Version] 1. Julius (May 10, 1857, Lengerich, Westphalia – Jun 7, 1930, Münster), together with F. Spitta, a leader of the “Older Liturgical Movement.” After studying theology at Bonn, Halle, and Göttingen, he succeeded Spitta as assistant preacher in Bonn. He received his license to teach in 1884 and was appointed pastor in Seelscheid. In 1891 he was appointed professor in the seminary at Friedberg and in 1893 professor of practical theology at Straßburg (Strasbourg). In 1914 he became the f…

[German Version] was a movement for the reform of ecclesiastical policy and regional church law in 18th-century Germany, in which episcopalian (Episcopalism: II) and national church ideas combined to form an explosive mixture. It owes its name to a book written by the suffragan bishop of Trier J.N.v. Hontheim (1701–1790), De statu Ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani Pontificis…, which appeared in 1763 under the pseudonym Justinus Febronius. Following a selective reduction of its contents, the book became the agenda of Febronianism. Hontheim's objec…

[German Version] 1. Joachim (May, 1544, Pyritz, Pomerania [now Pyrzyce, Poland] – Jan 14, 1623, Greifswald). Initially (1572) professor of mathematics in Greifswald, in 1578 he was appointed professor of law, a member of the ducal council, and president of the consistory. With his younger brother Matthias (2. below), he was a leading advocate of the episcopal system (Episcopalism: I), appealing to imperial law to legitimate the evolving Pro­testant system of placing church governance in the hands of…

[German Version] (Bodinus; 1529 or 1530, Angers – 1596, Laon) was a Carmelite for a brief period; he studied law in Toulouse from 1550 and became an advocate at the Parliament of Paris in 1561. In 1571, he entered the service of the Duke of Alençon and made contact with the “Politiques,” a group of moderate Catholics and Protestants who regarded the state as h…

[German Version] The summepiscopate of the princes is a 19th-century term for the governance of the Protestant churches, but its roots go back to the 16th century. After the breakdown of episcopal jurisdiction, with the approval of the Reformers the Protestant estates of the Empire set about restructuring the governance of the church; only “out of Christian charity” (Luther), it was to be put in the hands of the sovereign as praecipuum membrum ecclesiae (Melanchthon), but not by virtue of his temporal authority. Therefore Luther was not the progenitor of the princes’…

[German Version] ( Jan 16, 1802, Munich – Aug 10, 1861, Brückenau), Protestant jurisprudent and politician. Stahl (orig. Jolson) was of Jewish parentage; in 1819 he converted to Lutheranism and took the name Stahl when he was baptized. In 1832 he was appointed associate professor at Erlangen and in the same year full professor at Würzburg; in 1834 he was ¶ appointed full professor at Erlangen. As representative of the university in the Bavarian Landtag, he was reprimanded on account of a conflict with the government; in 1840 he therefore accepted an appointment in Be…

[German Version] (Feb 25, 1916, Chemnitz – Mar 29, 1967, Munich) was a Protestant lawyer who studied from 1936 to 1939, received his doctorate in 1940, and, following almost a decade of military service and imprisonment in Russia, became a lawyer serving the church. He gained his Habilitation in 1956 (Munich), became professor of state and church law in Marburg in 1958/59, and professor of church and state law in Munich in 1959. Grundmann's life work was devoted especially to Protestant canon law …

[German Version] The “standard year” of the Peace of Westphalia established in 1624 as normative for religious observance. It drastically restricted the right of princes to determine the confessional allegiance ( Ius reformandi ) of their lands guaranteed in the Peace of Augsburg by ensuring that the religion practiced legally – publicly or privately – at any time during the year 1624 could continue in that form in the future ( Instrumentum pacis osnabrugense art. V, §§32ff.). Church property was to remain in the hands of whoever held it on the “standard day” ( dies normalis; art. V, §2),…

[German Version] I. Practical Theology The term school prayers refers primarily to prayers at the beginning or end of the school day or during breaks, along with prayers during religious education classes. In German public schools today – unlike the period of the denominational primary schools (into the 1960s) and also unlike in England, for example – such prayers are a marginal phenomenon. Scattered attempts to reintroduced school prayers like that of the Bavarian government in 1987 (Kaufmann, 32–38) e…

[German Version] (“it pleases”; also placetum regium, exequatur regium) is the formula expressing assent by the local prince to ecclesiastical legislation, especially papal legislation. It was both a requirement before the law could take effect in the ruler’s territory and authorization to promulgate it (Publication). First put into practice in England and in French Gallicanism, it was introduced after the 17th century in many countries of western and southern Europe. In the German Empire, initially onl…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term substitution, originating in the language of law, is used primarily in Christian theology, but it is well suited for use in religious studies as well, even though so far there has been no detailed systematic treatment of it. In the most general sense, we speak of substitution when the true subject affected or acting (God, an individual like the king, or a collective) is represented by another ¶ entity (a person or group, an animal, or an object) as a substitute involved (actively or passively) in the action, acting for the…

[German Version] (Reinkingk, since 1650: v. Reinking; Mar 10, 1590, Windau, Courland [today Ventspils, Latvia] – Dec 15, 1664, Glückstadt), outstanding Lutheran politician and scholar of constitutional law. After occupying a chair at Giessen, from 1618 he held high offices of state in Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, archepiscopal Bremen (representing the archdiocese at the 1648 peace negotiations in Osnabrück), and Denmark. His most important academic work, Tractatus de regimine seculari et ecclesiastico (1619, 71717), characterizes the Empire as a monarchy of the em…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics – III. Philisophy – V. History – VI. Mission I. Dogmatics Freedom of religion, as generally understood, combines freedom of belief, of conscience, and creed, as well as freedom to practice one's religion (cf. German Basic Law, art. 4, §§1, 2), in one fundamental right. Dogmatics needs to clarify the relationship between religious certainty and freedom. A statement consonant with Reformation belief would run as follows: If Christian certainty, as certainty about the …

[German Version] In the Holy Roman Empire, reserved rights were the epitome of the (historically varying) rights enjoyed by the emperor without any requirement of approval by electors and the Reichstag. Borrowing from this usage, in the 19th century Reservatsrechte were those rights of church governance, rooted in the summepiscopate of the territorial prince, that he had reserved to be exercised personally (i.e. not by church officials acting in his name). The most important were: approbation of ecclesiastical legislation passed by synods, in ¶ some cases including the right to…

[German Version] I. From the very beginning, the church has always existed on the basis of communication. All human lives spent within it are realized in the communicative justification of human community. In all periods, therefore, it has placed every available means of communication in the service of its mission. The modern transition to an information-based society, however, represents a particular challenge. In many episcopal and papal statements going back as far as…

[German Version] (Huig de Groot; Apr 10, 1583, Delft, The Netherlands – Aug 28, 1645, Rostock), an impor-¶ tant jurist and theologian. From a patrician Delft family, Grotius attended the University of Leiden already as an eleven-year-old. After studying classical philology, history, theology, and law, he received the Dr.iur. in Orléans on an ambassadorial journey in 1598 and became a lawyer in 1599. An expert's opinion in the conflict of the sea-trade interests of Holland and Portugal contained the pioneering chapter De mare libero (1604; ET: The Free Sea, 2004), in which Grotius j…

[German Version] I As one type of relationship between church and state, a state church is a church incorporated into the state in such a way that it appears to be a state institution. As a result, the state not only has the right to intervene in the internal governance of the church (staffing, deciding doctrinal conflicts, disposition of church property, etc.; Church polity) but also may use the church for state purposes. 1 The history of state churches began when Theodosius I made the Christian church the only recognized church of the Roman Empire ( Reichskirche). In East Rome, a sacral …

[German Version] At the request of the liberal Bavarian minister of culture Johannes v. Lutz (1826–1890), §130a, the Kanzelparagraph, was included in the German criminal code by a law of Dec 10, 1871, part of the legislation enacted during the Kulturkampf. It threatened the clergy, with other official religious leaders, with up to two years imprisonment if they discussed state matters in public or in their preaching and threatened the public order. A law of Feb 28, 1872, extended the statutory offense to include dissemination of similar ideas in writing. During the Kirchenkampf (Nation…

[German Version] (Apr 23, 1827, Winterberg, Westphalia – Dec 19, 1914, Obermais, near Meran), Catholic canonist and legal historian. He was appointed associate professor in Prague in 1854, full professor in 1855; from 1873 to 1906, he taught as a professor in Bonn. Although originally closely tied to the Catholic Church, in 1870 he became one of the most prominent critics of the dogma of papal infallibility and – with J. v. Döllinger – a leading organizer of the Old Catholic movement (Old Catholic…

[German Version] denotes the equal status in law of religious communities in the state; it therefore presupposes the dissolution of confessional homogeneity within the state. Parity had been practiced earlier, but in Germany it first gained legal form through the (still limited) equality granted to the Catholic and Protestant parties, particularly in the Peace of Augsburg. It gained an explicit basis in constitutional law in the Peace of Westphalia as aequalitas exacta mutuaque (“complete and mutual equality”). At the same time, the previously excluded Reformed beli…

[German Version] I. In international law, neutrality is the legal status of a state that is not participating in a war involving other states. This status carries various rights (e.g. territorial integrity, armed resistance to violations of neutrality) and duties (esp. no military, financial, or other support of any belligerent, sufficient military potential to defend against attacks in peacetime, willingness to allow ships on the high seas to be searched by belligerents, and equal treatment of the…

[German Version] The term Constantinian Era is a headword known more in the context of “the end of the Constantinian Era” (Constantine the Great) than as a period delimited by precise historical criteria and is supposed to characterize the symbiosis of church and secular authority that began with the “Constantinian change” (312) and lasted into the modern era, indeed into recent history. It is meant to refer to an alliance in which each side uses the services of the other to reach its ¶ goals: the church uses the state for recourse to secular force and privileges; the st…

[German Version] (May 27, 1818, Zellerfeld – Dec 25, 1893, Hanover), Protestant teacher of constitutional and church law. After studying law in Göttingen, Berlin and Jena, Mejer obtained his doctorate in 1841 in Göttingen; he became a lecturer there in 1842, and a full professor at Königsberg in 1847, Greifswald in 1850, Rostock in 1851, and finally Göttingen from 1874 to 1885, after which he was president of the Hanover Evangelical Lutheran regional consistory until his death. As a pupil of A.L. …

[German Version] (Dec 20, 1837, Konitz, Western Prussia – Sep 7, 1910, Leipzig), (Protestant) jurist who became associate professor at the University of Halle in 1865, followed by Freiburg in 1868; from 1869, he was full professor at Leipzig. Deeply committed to the Hegelian idea of the state (G.W.F. Hegel), Friedberg belonged to the most prominent “state canonists” who sided with the state in the Kulturkampf . Although Friedberg sought to legitimate his position from a scientific-historical standpoint, his evaluation of the medieval conflic…

[German Version] I. History Religious education (RE) in schools, in modern usage of the term (for RE in a broader sense see Christian doctrine classes, Confirmation classes), is the result of the general differentiation process that led to the promotion of religious learning beyond the contexts of family and worship. The schools of the European cultural sphere arose largely in the area of the church (School and church, Church schools, Monastery schools); for a long time, schooling was essentially based on religious texts. Since each country established its own particular forms…