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New Type of Religiosity 1. The Reformation radiating from Germany hosted a confluence of social, political, and religious developments. In terms of religion, the various motifs were focused through scriptural principles, and a teaching on justification. The criticism of the Church by that Church itself led to a collapse of the medieval concept of a unitary Christianity, the Corpus Christianum. Into its place stepped the co-existing confessional churches. In the Protestant regional churches, there arose a new type of Christian religiosity, one characteri…

The Person 1. Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Saxony, Germany. In 1505, to fulfill a private vow that he had made in acute fear of death and the Last Judgment, he entered the monastery of Augustinian hermits in Erfurt. His experience of failing to attain a salvific relationship to God even as a monk led him to a gradual change of attitude and the ‘reformatory turn’ that he later stylized in his self-interpretation as a sudden experience of breakthrough and awakening. O…

[German Version] (c.1300, Strasbourg – Jun 16, 1361, Strasbourg). Along with Meister Eckhart and H. Suso, Tauler was the most important representative of German Dominican mysticism (III, 3.b) on the Upper Rhine. Trained at the Dominican convent in Strasbourg, which he had joined around the age of 14, he did not hold a degree in theology but had received a good education; philosophically active, he participated in the neoplatonic revival in the Dominican order (Berthold of Moosburg). In terms of th…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies and History of Philosophy The dogmatic definition of the Holy Spirit as a person within the one divine substance (Trinity/Doctrine of the Trinity) presupposes not only a particular philosophical context but also a religio-historical horizon. A formative influence on the conceptualization of the Holy Spirit was exercised by the various anthropomorphic interpretations of elemental anthropological or normative qualities in the context of polytheistic interpretations of …

[German Version] I. New Testament – II. Church History – III. Theology I. New Testament 1. The term ἀντίχριστος appears in Christian literature only in 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7, and, dependent on these texts, Pol. Phil 7:1. There it refers to someone who turns against Christ and the confession of Christ, not – as would be linguistically possible – someone who seeks to take the place of Christ; in context, it refers to theological opponents collectively. …

[German Version] I. Neurobiology and Psychology – II. Religious Studies – III. Ancient Near East and Old Testament – IV. Early Judaism – V. Greco-Roman Antiquity – VI. New Testament – VII. Church History – VIII. Fundamental Theology – IX. Practical Theology – X. Missiology – XI. Art History I. Neurobiology and Psychology Dreams are hallucinatory experiences that generally occur during sleep. Unlike real experiences, they involve associations that are temporally, spatially, and emot…

[German Version] (died Mar 30, 1530, Stuttgart). The Augsburg weaver Bader, who was released from a brief imprisonment in 1527 following his tactical revocation of his anabaptist beliefs and who fled from Augsburg in 1528, prolonged the unfulfilled eschatological predictions of H. Hut from 1528 onward by means of his own isionary conception. With only a few followers, he expected the rul…

[German Version] I. Definition Sociology is an empirical social science; its field of study encompasses the relatively enduring forms and structures of social action (Action, Science of ) and the resultant social units, from entities like the family and kinship group and social groups to large-scale organizations and states. The word itself is an artificial combination of Latin socius (“companion, fellow”) and Greek logos (“word, truth,” in an extended sense “knowledge”). It appears for the first time in vol. IV of the Cours de philosophie positive of A. Comte (1838). As a scie…

[German Version] (Dec 28, 1654, Metz – Mar 7, 1729, Berlin). During his service as a page at the Saxon-Eisenach court in Marksuhl (c. 1666 to 1670), Naudé became familiar with German culture and the internal differences within Protestantism. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he came to Brandenburg in 1687 by way of Saarbrücken and Hanau. There he embarked on a career in mathematics (1687 teaching in the Gymnasium in Joachimsthal, appointed court mathematician in 1696, made a made member…

[German Version] (d. Jun 29, 1293, Tournai) supported the Beguines as archdeacon in Brügge (from 1276/1277) and Tournai (from 1279) and had decisive influence as magister regens of theology in Paris from 1275 to 1292. Although he was involved in the condemnation of rigorous Aristotelianism (his role was never completely clarified), during the various stages of his intellectual development, he nevertheless followed Avicenna and Augustine in placing Aristotelian modes of thought in the context of a Christian Neoplatonism (…

[German Version] (1328, Kalkar – Dec 20, 1408, Cologne). Henry of Kalkar received the M.A. in Paris in 1357, and later the Bacc.theol. Renouncing already acquired benefices, he entered the Charterhouse of Cologne (Carthusians) in 1365. From 1368 to 1396, he held leading positions in charterhouses near Arnhem and Roermond, in Cologne, and near Strasbourg, while also officiating as visitor of his province from 1375 ¶ onward. In performing the spiritual dimension of these offices, he developed a devotional theology of monastic discipleship which aimed to achieve …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. New Testament – III. Church History – IV. North America – V. Systematic Theology – VI. Islam – VII. China I. Religious Studies Millenarianism (chiliasm) refers to the notion of a 1,000-year (Lat. millenarius, Gk χίλια/ chília) period ¶ immediately preceding the Last Judgment and the end of the world. This conception of world history (see also II) derives from Jewish apocalypticism (III) and became widespread over time, being interpreted in various ways depending on the age and cultural envi…

[German Version] The university founded in 1386 by Rupert I, Elector Palatine, was initially staffed by scholars forced out of Paris and Prague because of ecclesial and national opposition. The founding rector Marsilius of Inghen guided Heidelberg on the path of a moderate via moderna; from 1452, the via antiqua shared equal rights. The scholastic manner of instruction (Scholasticism) was supplemented after 1456 with the humanist (Humanism: III), but not profoundly altered. Brought to the Lutheran Reformation in 1558 by Ottheinrich (1556–1559)…

[German Version] (1550, Liège – after 1630, Straßburg [Strasbourg]). Though born into a Catholic family, Sudermann came into contact with Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Anabaptism early on. Having worked as a private tutor, after 1585 he served as an educator of the nobility at the Bruderhof in Straßburg. He had already come in contact with the ideas of K. v. Schwenckfeld, some of whose writings he began publishing in 1584. He dated his own attraction to Schwenckfeld’s teaching from a conversion expe…

[German Version] (Georgsohn; 1501, Flanders – Aug 25, 1556, Basel). The glass painter Joris's public criticism of a Host procession in Delft in 1528 led to his mutilation and banishment. After receiving adult baptism in 1534/1535, Joris promoted his claims to leadership when he mediated between the Melchiorite Anabaptists (who were divided after the fall of Münster), seeking an – at least temporary – renunciation of violence (Bocholt meeting, 1536). Ecstatic visions in December 1536 confirmed his …

[German Version] (1285/1289, Jandun – 1328, Todi). John, who received his M.A. in Paris in 1310, regarded Averroes as a normative authority, more definitively so than the consistent Aristotelians of the 13th century did. He accepted Averroes's doctrine of the soul and cosmology as philosophically correct but did not intellectually harmonize them with Christian doctrine, which he never explicitly disputed. Together with Marsilius of Padua, whom he influenced intellectually (although he did not co-author the Defensor pacis), he escaped the Inquisition in 1326 and fled to …

[German Version] I. Course – II. French Revolution and Religion – III. Effects on Germany In the French Revolution, discontent exploded over the inability of French absolutism under Louis XVI to achieve reform. It signaled the dissolution of the old European estates (Estate-based society) and absolutism, to be replaced by bourgeois society (Bourgeoisie) and the constitutional state based on the rule of law. I. Course The struggle of the aristocracy in the parlements to preserve their traditional privileges frustrated the govern-¶ ment, which, facing a major financial cris…

[German Version] (died Nov 29, 1342, Munich). After receiving his doctorate in theology in Paris in 1316 and being elected minister general of the Franciscans, Michael became the key figure in the transition from the practical to the theoretical poverty (IV) debate. In agreement with John XXII, he opposed the Spiritual Franciscans, whom he had been unable to reintegrate into the order; after the chapter in Perugia in 1322, however, he rejected its denial of the total poverty of Christ and his disc…

[German Version] (Dec 11, 1694, Frankfurt am Main – Jul 24, 1776, Lingen). After studying jurisprudence in Marburg and Halle (C. Thomasius) and undertaking educational journeys, especially to the courts of European rulers, Loën lived in Frankfurt am Main from an inherited fortune from 1724. Drawing on the form of the courtly Baroque novel, he developed an ¶ enlightened conception of state politics in Der redliche Mann am Hofe (The candid man at court; 1740). In the essay Die einzig wahre Religion (The only true religion; 1750f.), he elaborated an irenic program on the basis …

[German Version] (Jan 9/10, 1502, Münster? – after 1570). Gifted as a visionary from his youth, Niclaes moved from Amsterdam to Emden after his calling as a prophet in 1540. He expanded late medieval mystical concepts into a prophetic-chiliastic spiritualism. Against a background of pantheistic ontology, he saw himself as the reincarnation of Christ. Through his missionary journeys, the “Family of Love” (Familists) spread, through their experience of the Spirit transcend-¶ ing the bounds of confession and religion; this was not rightly understood in the many accusa…