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[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term solidarity (from neo-Lat. solidaritas, derived from solidus, “solid, firm”; Fr. solidarité) denotes the cohesiveness of a “group,” ultimately society, expressed in a generally ethical sense of cohesion. In the history of the term, originally borrowed from legal usage (Wildt, Baumgartner), É. Durkheim (1893) distinguishes the “organic solidarity” of a differentiated modern society from the “mechanical solidarity” of so-called primitive societies, in which the individuals act collectively like parts of a mechanism. Solidarity took on a religious significa…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Philosophy – III. Theology 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 a…

[German Version] Derived from the Latin compensatio (“balance/balancing”), the term “compensation” found its way into various historical areas of culture and religion as well as into a number of scholarly disciplines (theology, jurisprudence, education, [individual] psychology, ecology, economics, etc.). In the study of religions, “compensation theory” refers to a critical theory of religion according to which religion represents a form of compensation, and notions o…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Dogmatics I. Religious Studies In the study of religion, the term “monism” denotes concepts that relate the whole of reality to a single principle, and understand diversity and plurality as an all- unity. Monism, from the Gk μόνος/ monos…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Concept. The word revelation echoes the Greek ἀποκάλυψις/ apokálypsis (“uncovering”), which was translated into Latin as revelatio and then borrowed into most European languages. The literal meaning already indicates that revelation involves a reality, content, more specifically a message hidden from mortals. Revelation is important: it is relevant religious knowledge necessary for salvation, for finding meaning, and for dealing with everyday life. It is knowledge that peo-¶ ple do not already possess by nature, and their religion says they …

[German Version] I. The Term The term structuralism is a collective name for an intellectual movement that shaped the human sciences and intellectual life in general, especially in France, in the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic studies, proponents of structuralism analyzed the enormous diversity of phenomena perceptible to the senses, seeking to define their common invariant structures. Just as the term structure is derived from Latin structura, a fabric of different but interrelated elements, the structuralists examined phenomena perceptible to t…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In the classical phenomenology of religion, the universalism/particularism dichotomy denotes the difference between universal religions (Typology of religion) and so-called folk religions (Folk piety); the latter are “limited to a single people,” whereas the former “spread to include many peoples” (Mensching, 286f.) and proclaim a “univ…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. The use of the term speculat…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. Religious Studies 1. Preliminary Considerations. “Atheism” is a Lati-nized term, current since the end of the 16th century, meaning disbelief in God. It derives from Gk ἄθεός/ átheós (alpha privative), literally “without God.” This historical background with its specifically European connotation must be kept in mind in any …