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[German Version] I. Fundamental Theology Process theology is a school within North American theology (North America, Theology in: III) whose essential stimuli came from the process metaphysics (Process philosophy) of A.N. Whitehead. The early center of this movement was the University of Chicago, where from the mid-1920s Whitehead’s thought came to influence theology through the work of H.N. Wieman (and later his students Bernard M. Loomer and Bernard E. Meland) and Charles Hartshorne. The appeal to…

[German Version] (Gk “all-animating”) goes back to Francesco Patrizzi’s Panpsychia (1591), and denotes the idea of a vital world-soul ( anima mundi) penetrating everything that is, as encountered in the philosophy of the Renaissance (G. Bruno, B. de Spinoza), the Enlightenment (G.W. Leibniz), and Romanticism (F.W.J. Schelling, J.G. Herder, H. Heine). Closely related to pantheism and pansophism, panpsychism opposes the mechanistic wor…

[German Version] The term fatality can be defined in two ways. First, it approximates the content of the Greek understanding of “fate” (Heraclitus, Stoics). Accordingly, the human being is part of a determined course of events (Determinism) expressed in the natural laws of the world and the social order. These natural laws, which the Stoics primarily understood causally as heimarmene, an “uninterrupted series of causes,” to which human understanding is also subject. Human fatality consists in finding oneself to be part of a largely determined world, the natural laws of which can be only partially understood. In contrast, enlightened moderns abandon notions of inalterably determined orders and replace them with the creative power of intellect itself, a power that helps the specifically human realm, above all, to acheive a stable moral order. Fatality remains, however, in the fact that even this higher-level rat…

[German Version] Protology, as a part of Christian theology, deals with the question of the conditions of a valid life before God. It focuses on the “first things,” but not solely on account of their historical role as the starting point of time (“primordial time”), the process to which all creaturely reality is subject. It is also concerned in a comprehensive sense with God as Creator (Creation), his activity that sets opportunities and limits to the self-development of the created world. The bib…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Fundamental Theology – III. Applications I. Philosophy The concept of effective history ( Wirkungsgeschichte) takes on philosophical significance in the hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamer, where it represents the attempt to clarify the fundamental requirement for understanding texts and make this understanding transparent in its own historically conditioned context. …

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[English Version] . Der Begriff V. kann in zweifacher Weise bestimmt werden. Zum einen steht er in sachlicher Nähe zum griech. Verständnis von »Schicksal« (Heraklit, Stoa). Demnach ist der Mensch Teil eines determinierten (Determinismus) Weltlaufs, der sich in den Gesetzmäßigkeiten natürlicher und sozialer Ordnung ausdrückt. Diesen Gesetzmäßigkeiten, die die Stoa v.a. kausal als Heimarmene, als »unverbrüchliche Reihe der Ursachen« versteht, ist auch der menschliche Verstand unterworfen. Das V. des…

[English Version] . Der Begriff P. (griech. »Allbeseelung«) geht auf Francesco Patrizzis »Panpsychia« (1591) zurück und bez. die in der Philos. der Renaissance (G. Bruno, B. de  Spinoza), der Aufklärung (G.W. Leibniz) und der Romantik (F.W. J. Schelling, J.G. Herder, H. Heine) begegnende Vorstellung einer vitalen, all…

[English Version] I. Fundamentaltheologisch Als P. wird eine Strömung der Theol. Nordamerikas bez. (Nordamerika, Theologie in:  III.), deren wesentliche Impulse auf die Prozeßmetaphysik (Prozeßphilosophie) A.N. Whiteheads zurückgehen. Das frühe Zentrum dieser Bewegung war die University of Chicago, wo seit Mitte der 20er Jahre des 20.Jh. Whiteheads Denken durch H.N. Wieman (und später dessen Schüler Bernard M. Loomer und Bernard E. Meland) sowie Charles Hartshorne Einfluß auf die Theol. gewann. De…