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[German Version] As the opposite of election or salvation by God, and in divergence from common linguistic usage in dogmatics, rejection must be distinguished from damnation in so far as it is not necessarily associated with eschatological consequences in terms of definitive exclusion from salvation (Kingdom of God: IV). The apostle Paul’s struggle over the fate of the chosen people of Israel, in the face of their widespread non-acceptance of the new covenant of God with all humankind in Jesus Chr…

[German Version] The term imminent Parousia expectation refers in the first place to the primitive Christian expectation, in the context of an apocalyptic conception of the world (Apocalypticism), of the imminent return (Parousia) of the crucified and risen Lord for the final establishing of the kingdom of God still in the lifetime of the first generation of Christians (cf. 1 Thess 4:17; Phil 4:5; 1 Cor 7:29). This eschatological (Eschatology) orientation (ἐλπίς/ elpís) resulted from the liberating (Liberation) experience of having overcome life-threatening and ungo…

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[German Version] Existential theology is less a unified theological position or method than a particular theological attitude in the sense of a polemical and appellative corrective. It acquires its specific profile through the critical rejection of a domesticated and self-satisfied Christianity, but also of a theology that has a bias toward the ideal of objective science. For S. Kierkegaard ( Sygdommen til Døden, 1849; …

[German Version] Especially in the context of an apocalyptic theology of history (History, Theology of), premoni-¶ tions of the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ (Parousia) as judge and savior based on portents and omens are described and interpreted by initiates by virtue of special revelations and visions. Against the background of the delayed Parousia and God’s apparent …

[German Version] (Gk ἀποκατάστασις πάντων) or the redemption/restoration of all is the eschatological notion that all human beings (things, creatures) without exception will be received into eschatological salvation (the kingdom of God). One the one hand, apocatastasis conflicts with the more common eschatological notion of a “double outcome,” which envisions an…

[German Version] (Aug 23, 1773, Barby – Aug 10, 1843, Jena), a philosopher in the circle of so-called German Idealism, a physicist and mathematician, the founder of Friesianism (Ernst Friedrich Apelt) or neo-Friesianism (Leonard Nelson; R. Otto). From a Herrnhuter family, Fries attended the school in Niesky together with F.D.E. Schleiermacher, with whom his thought in the philosophy of religion has affinity, and studied with Ernst Platner, among others, in Leipzig and with J.G. Fichte in Jena, where he also gained his doctorate and habilitation. Here, his first important works were written, System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft [System of philosophy as an intuitive science] (1804) and Wissen, Glauben und Ahndung [Knowing, believing, and suspecting] (1805). Together with G.W.F. Hegel, with whom Fries had an extremely critical relationship, as also with Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling, he became associate professor at Jena in 1805, only to be called in the same year to Heidelberg as professor of philosophy, from 1812 also of physics, where he developed a friendship with the kindred spirit F.H. …

[German Version] The distinction between present and future eschatology as the doctrine of the “last things” can be derived from the ambiguity of the term “last.” On the one hand, “last” may be understood qualitatively, or in terms of value, as what is ultimately valid; on the other hand, it may be understood temporally or chronologically as the final culmination. The first understanding is a…

[German Version] Against the background of the existentialism (theology) of R. Bultmann ( …

[German Version] This concept was introduced by K. Jaspers to describe the specific existence of the human person as distinct from all that exists as a thing (Existentialism [philosophy]; Existentialism [theology]). A borderline situation cannot be planned and controlled by the reason; it is contingent, and is an existential datum of human existence like for e…

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[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Dogmatics I. Philosophy of Religion Future is relevant to the philosophy of religion, first, in relation to the analysis of existence (Existe…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion I. Philosophy Etymologically, the word “absolute” means something separate from and independent of everything that is only relative. In this sense, the absolute can be understood ontologically as substance, logically as principle. If the absolute is taken as a …

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics I. Dogmatics While the term liberty (Lat. libertas) denotes the state or property of being free, liberation describes the process through which liberty or freedom is achieved. Liberation is the conscious praxis of freedom to achieve freedom from oppression (Freire).…

[German Version] I. Fundamental Theology – II. Philosophy I. Fundamental Theology Historicality as a specific determinant of human existence in contrast to everything that is simply there (Existence) must be distinguished from the historicity of an event or situation in the sense of its having been authenticated as an assured hi…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Dogmatics …

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics I. History of Religions As a theological category, damnation belongs primarily in the context of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The etymology of the term itself connotes a local and a judicial dimension: the punishment of expulsion to a real or imaginary place as an exclusion from …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy – III. Fundamental Theology I. Religious Studies …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies S. Freud claimed credit for discovering the unconscious as a key concept for psychoanalysis, but much older concepts of the unconscious are found in religious and philosophical systems: (a) in the works of Plato(ἀνάμνησις/ anámnēsis as the unconscious condition for conscious mental activity) and Plotinus, (b) in Indian Vedānta and Buddhism ( avidyā, “ignorance,” inducing māyā), and (c) in the medieval Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart ( Seligkeit) and the 14th-century English mystical text The Cloud of Unknow…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Since time immemorial, the use of the term spirit has been influenced by Christian usage, especially by the concept of the Holy Spirit, including connotations of Latin spiritus and Greek πνεύμα/ pneúma. Spirit has a wide range of meaning; it can denote both a spiritual and a mental attitude, dynamic, or quality ascribed to an individual and a projection of such phenomena into the external world. An anthropomorphic concretion of such projections can then refer to “beings” that in earlier times might have been called “trolls” or the like. 2. In religious studies, the use of the term spirit is still shaped by the 19th-century discussion of animism. E.B. Tylor defined animism as the basic form of religion; belief in spirits arose, he maintained, from observations in the context of phenomena like sleep, dreams, and death, in conjunction with primitive attempts to explain them; other forms of religion developed out of animism. Robert R. Marett (1866–1943) instead hypothesized that belief in active impersonal forces was the prototypical form o…

[German Version] I. As Epoch …

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[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. History of Religions – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Art History…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. History of Dogma – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Philosophy of Religion – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam (cf. Present and Future Eschatology, Consistent Eschatology) I. Religious Studies 1. The Problem of Terminology Eschatology (“discourse” or “doctrine” [Gk λόγος/ lógos] concerning the “last things” [Gk ἔσχατα/ éschata]) is a neologism that was …